The students charged in connection to the case of Eric Blair, the 18-year-old Bay City resident who drowned in October in the Red Cedar River, have served their purpose - at least, as far as the county prosecutor’s office is concerned.
Seeking to make a quick impact on irresponsible drinking, prosecutors used five MSU students as scapegoats, giving the public somebody to point a finger at in connection with Blair’s death.
The students all pleaded guilty to supplying Blair with alcohol.
The Delta College student’s body was found in the Red Cedar on Oct. 23, four days after he disappeared from an East Lansing party. Blair had a blood-alcohol level of .14, above the state’s legal limit of .1. Prosecutors say one student purchased beer for Blair in exchange for him paying admittance to a party at the other four’s apartment.
Blair drank nine beers in two and a half hours before going to the party, where admission was charged for alcohol, including jungle juice, police and prosecutors said.
These five students broke the law, and they have to face the consequences for what they did. But these are common mistakes college students everywhere make.
Embarrassing these individuals in the courts will do little to change the way college students deal with alcohol.
Go to any Michigan college campus on a weekend and there’s sure to be a party where admission is charged for alcohol and minors are drinking. Prosecutors’ charges of these five students, making them a public spectacle for the sake of a few anti-alcohol headlines, haven’t changed that.
Enforcing alcohol laws is one answer to curbing irresponsible drinking by college students. Police could target more parties and could crack down further on minors found with alcohol. But for this tactic to have any impact, there must be consistency with enforcement.
Prosecutors can’t only pursue charges when something horrible happens.
But filling our jails with college students who drink only will create more problems. Law enforcement, college and public health officials must find new and better ways to teach students the purpose and benefits of responsible drinking.
It would be naive to think underage drinking on college campuses can be completely eliminated, but it’s not an impossible goal to make sure those who choose to drink know the consequences of their actions.
There have been five alcohol-related deaths near MSU since 1994.
Each time one more is added to that list, we ask how many it takes before students take drinking seriously. It is a life-and-death matter, and it does take the attention of law enforcement to help curb the problem.
But only addressing the problem of alcohol when a tragedy occurs is the wrong direction to take in this community.
Alcohol education needs to be an effort we all take seriously all the time if we truly want to make changes that last a lifetime.
