Wilkes students consumed by partying for Winter Weekend
Over the weekend of Feb. 22-23, Wilkes University students celebrated an event called Winter Weekend. Winter Weekend, a now annual event to honor the real college life of a Wilkes University student, consists of what many of Wilkes Students consider the entertaining side of college: partying.
Instead of raising money for an event to benefit a good cause or help the Wilkes-Barre community, money was doled out to purchase kegs, themed T-shirts and to organize events for the weekend. Some of the events included (and were not limited to), beer pong, Edward 40 Hands, Flip Cup, Quarters, and keg stands for volunteers throughout the night.
From multiple experiences noted from students across campus, the Beacon learned much of what goes on during Winter Weekend.
Before attending the Winter Weekend events, it is insisted upon by many to go to pre-game parties before actually going out to the real party. If you are wondering, a pre-game party is a party to drink alcohol before you go out and drink more alcohol and is a form of binge drinking.
The real party consisted of alcohol drinking in the form of regulated games at house parties throughout Wilkes-Barre.
From student experience, alcohol in the form of beer is rarely the drink of choice at pre-gaming parties. Wilkes University students are more likely to indulge in harder forms of alcohol spirits like vodka, rum, whiskey, brandy and patron all of which have an alcohol proof of 80 or higher.
After multiple shots of a more concentrated alcoholic substance, students begin to get rowdy, some falling into the wall, and some urinating off the balcony then laughing as their urine falls near people walking on the street. This not only is disgusting and morally decrepit for a supposedly educated college student, it highlights the negative impact alcohol has on impairing the cerebellum and our frontal lobes, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse.
After the pregame party is over, many Wilkes party-goers head out into the cold streets of Wilkes-Barre. For some of these students, they choose to not wear any form of winter wear although it is extremely cold outside. Many of them explain their reasoning, “it is extremely hot in the party houses due to the mass amount of people in one place, and there’s nowhere to put your coat once you’re inside.”
This is dangerous; heading out into the cold in a drunken state poses many health risks. The first risk of stumbling into the cold is hypothermia.
What would happen if a student wandered off away from the group and got lost in a drunken state of dementia? They would surely die in the cold or have to be hospitalized if they were stuck in the cold for an extended amount of time. Not to mention, it is flu season; drinking alcohol weakens your immune system according the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
When you go in and out of different environments, it also puts your body at risk for catching some kind of plague of the 21st century.
Once arrived at the party, a student is forced to pay a $10 to $15 cup fee to drink out of the house keg. This money could have been used to fund a benefit for breast cancer or homelessness in Wilkes-Barre, instead of going into a grubby underage alcohol dealer.
Money is free-flowing during Winter Weekend. If our student government was able to create an event for legal drinking on campus for a small fee, money could be raised for any cause or organization.
For the most part, everyone at these house parties are young; parties consist of mainly freshmen and sophomores all underage. Not only are these parties promoting binge drinking, they are promoting underage drinking and that is against the law.
Students noted multiple people passing out throughout the night in the corner, waking only to puke in garbage cans or run to the bathroom. Because people were binge drinking at this party, they were at risk of blacking out.
Blacking out is negative because it affects your ability to remember what you are doing. You are a ghost in the world, being controlled by the world around you.
In an academic journal survey about Trait-based Affective Processes in Alcohol involved “Risk Behaviors,” 545 binge drinking to blackout individuals reported many of the things they did while under the influence: 161 (29.5 percent) drove drunk, 139 (25.5 percent) regretted a sexual situation, 67 (12.3 percent) reported unprotected sex, 60 (11 percent) reported having damaged property, 55 (10.1 percent) reported getting into a physical fight, and 29 (5.3 percent) reported injuring someone while under the influence of alcohol in the past 6 months.
Overall, when parties conclude, students are left out wandering into the open streets of Wilkes-Barre in the dark; some holding back vomit outside the party house and some heading home to go to sleep alone in a drunken slumber.
And that concludes Winter Weekend.