I hope the news articles on the recent death of 19-year-old Jason Wren, a student at the University of Kansas who died after a night of binge drinking, alerted parents to the discrepancies in the application of the law regarding students’ privacy and the practice of informing parents, or not, when students have a problem with drug or alcohol addiction or abuse.

According to Jason’s father, he knew his son had an alcohol problem before he sent him off to university and, had he known it was still a problem – he did send him to a ‘dry’ school so he did have reason to believe it would not be a problem – he would have brought him home where he could keep an eye on him.

Instead, he didn’t find out about the problems Jason was having until attending his son’s memorial service at the school, where he was allowed to see his son’s records for the first time. His son was on probation in his residence hall for alcohol violations, hadn’t shown up for the personal counseling session he was supposed to get because of it, and hadn’t done the required alcohol abuse course.

The school provost – a high ranking official, this one responsible for student success (!) - had the nerve to say that “there is no national evidence that parental notification makes a difference.”

I beieve that’s the lamest, most irresponsible, insensitive excuse I’ve ever heard. Someone’s son just died and she’s being a politician – covering her ass.

The law states that parents should be informed in an emergency. Until 2007, ‘emergency’ was defined as an ‘extreme situation’. After a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed himself and 32 others in April of that year, the definiton changed to a ‘significant threat to the health or safety of the student or other individuals.’

Well – that’s obviously open to interpretation. Ask 10 people on the street what they would consider a ‘significant threat to the health or safety of the student or other individuals’ and you’ll get 10 different answers. And it’s been proven that even the so-experts – psychiatrists – can’t predict whether someone’s dangerous or not. How is some administrator at a school, or a school council, going to do it?

What should you do? Jason’s father sent him to a ‘dry’ school; obviously, that wasn’t enough.

Where college-aged sons  and daughters with alcohol problems should go is to alcohol rehab. Not university. And if they’re taking drugs, do the same. Get them into an addiction treatment center - a long-term residential treatment program that will take however many months are needed to get down to the bottom of the problem so your kid CAN and WILL say no when the time comes.

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A recent news report called Xanax the new date rape drug. It’s usually prescribed for anxiety, is addictive, and can have pretty serious side effects. A girl quoted in the report said it’s commonly being given by guys to their dates, then followed with alcohol, at which point the girl becomes quite unaware of what’s happening cause she passes out.  At least she knew she was taking the drug. She could have refused.

Others aren’t so lucky. The medical director of a substance abuse treatment program said it’s becoming more and more common for guys to crush the pills and put it into girls’ drinks. They never know what hit them.

The girl interviewed, Leigh, not her real name, said prescription drugs are becoming very popular in college, for all kinds of students, not just in date-rape situations. She says they’re easy to get - all you have to do is go to a doctor and complain about the right symptoms. The students also give them to their friends. Or sell them.

As if all that weren’t enough, there’s the possibility of prescription drug addiction – not something most students think about because they believe that pills that come from a doctor are safe.

What can you do about it as a parent, a friend, or a college student? Educate others. Not just about date rape, but about prescription drugs in general, their dangerous side effects the possibility of addiction. And if you know someone who’s already taking them and can’t, or won’t stop, get them into an addiction treatment center. 

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Isn’t it time somebody did something about the University of Wisconsin? The place has been in the top ten party schools list for years, and the drinking problem is so bad the police don’t even have the resources to take care of anything other than some of the binge-drinking students who might die from alcohol poisoning if the cops weren’t personally carting them off to detox. And how many of them get into an addiction treatment center so they can really get down to the bottom of the problem? Not many.

Now UW has a drug problem – in 2008, so far, 35% of the students have taken some form of illicit drugs – which includes prescription drugs obtained illegally.

Police budgets have been cut, as have other law enforcement agencies, whose resources are so stretched that cases are just being dismissed because they can’t get to them, and the drug problem is getting even less attention than alcohol.

If I were a parent, I wouldn’t care if I lived next door to UW, which, thank God, I don’t, I wouldn’t let my kid go there.

Parents need to demand that something be done about it before their kids end up with a cocaine, heroin, meth or prescription drug addiction problem.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Start squeaking.

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Party schools - you may have heard of them. Those are the colleges where students focus more on drinking than their studies. We’ve been warning about them for a while. They’re little hubs of alcohol addiction and abuse in America. The article I’ve linked to above tells the story of one University of Wisconsin Madison student and her brushes with death due to alcohol addiction.

After three underage drinking tickets, blacking out several times and having been in detox, Margaret Teller started a night of partying at school and woke up the next day in her parents home. She gotten there via a trip to a Madison hospital where, once her blood alcohol level was low enough to register on a breathalizer, she blew a 0.35 – more than four times the legal limit.

Thanks to an alcohol rehab program she did over winter break and an off-campus mentoring and activities program she is now getting straightened out. But this is not a school program. A 2007 survey found that 66% of the kids at that college were involved in binge drinking over the prior two weeks – that’s 20% above the national average and that’s what landed Margaret Teller in trouble over and over again, and nearly killed her.

The program Margaret is currently involved in gives her an off campus social life that doesn’t involve drinking. True, UW Madison refers kids there, and the school has their own program to discourage drinking. But with alcohol addiction and abuse stats 20% above the national average, the school obviously still has a lot of work to do.

Sending a kid to college is an expensive proposition. Parents often can’t afford to send their kids to something other than a local college that may be a party school. Party schools need to clean up their act.

Margaret Teller is 20 years old and her alcohol addicton caused more than one close brush with death. If your kid is drinking, get them into an alcohol and drug addiction treatment center. Do it fast. And then make sure they go to a school that doesn’t have alcohol addiction and abuse as it’s primary focus.

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