By Ceili Doyle, Senior Staff Writer
I've spent the last two weeks thinking a lot about death. Ever since Erica Buschick died.
We college students think we're so invulnerable.
As a collective, we believe, as teenagers and twenty-somethings, that nothing and no one can touch us.
We binge more frequently and with more intensity than any generation before us, and despite our mind-over-matter mentality, we also die more frequently than any generation before us.
A student on our campus died. She was eighteen years old and she is gone. But that fact does not seem to resonate with many people at Miami.
We continue to plan our fraternity and sorority four-ways. At our Thursday night pregames, we never consider the possibility of an alternative event. We wake up, beat, darty, nap and repeat every Saturday.
This is not to say that all college students are at risk of throwing their lives away in the name of getting "fucked up" for one night. But we place so much emphasis on drinking and going out and fitting this image of ~college~ as a time of no caution, no excuses, no reservations -- and we forget there is a world outside of drowning our social lives with four, five, six shots on the side.
We laugh at Facebook videos and share tweets that depict strangers downing bottles of Hennessey and entire fifths of Jose Cuervo. We scoff at the administrators who frown on us reckless renegades. And we update our finstas with posts of the previous weekend filled with blackouts and unfamiliar bruises.
I am just as guilty as the next person. I have never given the concept considered the practice of binging on alcohol with the maturity and the respect it deserves. I have definitely drunk for the wrong reasons. Whether because of a fight with my parents or a sense of overwhelming inadequacy, I too have overindulged, unintentionally or otherwise. But after spending the past several days pondering a tragic and avoidable death, I no longer want to be the kind of person who only cares about having a good time without considering the consequences.
A good friend of mine recently said that we all have two or three times in our lives to determine what kind of person we want to be. He believes college is one of those times.
I urge all of us to take a moment, think of Erica, and reevaluate our priorities. Do we truly want to subject our loved ones to a phone call from someone saying we never woke up? This scenario is a reality for too many college students throughout the nation and at Miami University. It's appalling and it is so utterly avoidable.
I'm not writing this to condemn going out or having fun. I'm writing it to say: Let's quit tempting fate.
doyleca3@miamioh.edu