By Carson Starkey was 18 years old when his fraternity initiation ritual at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo went horribly wrong.
Starkey was a pledge rushing Sigma Alpha Epsilon in December 2008. As part of his initiation, fraternity brothers handed him and another pledge a fifth (750 ml.) of rum to drink, as well as a bottle of 151-proof Everclear that was being passed around the room.
But within 20 minutes of drinking the alcohol, Starkey collapsed and became unresponsive. A few fraternity brothers picked him up and placed him in a car to take him to a hospital a quarter mile away, but they abandoned the plan for fear of repercussions. Instead, they took him back into the house and left him on a mattress, unmonitored, where he died.
Starkey’s parents, Scott and Julia Starkey, told the story of their loss at the Cal State University Board of Trustees meeting on July 23. They also gave a presentation about “Aware, Awake, Alive,” an organization the Starkeys formed in August 2011 to spread alcohol awareness in colleges and universities across the country.
Teary-eyed after the presentation, CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White responded by committing to implement the program across the 23-campus system this year.
“Perhaps our action will be one more step forward to making his death and all it represents to so many families a little less painful,” White said at the meeting.
The peer-to-peer program aims to spread awareness by educating teens, young adults and parents about the dangers and symptoms of alcohol abuse via a web-based toolbox with more than 150 resources, according to Aware, Awake, Alive Communications Director David Wyatt.
“It’s kind of this strange thing; culturally, people just aren’t all that aware of it, and when you do hear about it, it seems like such an anomaly, but it’s really pretty common,” Wyatt said. “The shame is that it’s not like it happens to bad kids who willfully don’t take their friends in. They just think like we all do. He’ll sleep it off or puke and wake up in the morning.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three college students binge drink, which the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines as drinking that consists of five or more alcoholic beverages for men and four or more for women in one occasion.
CSU Spokesman Erik Fallis said the difference between this program and others is that Aware, Awake, Alive incorporates a peer-to-peer tool.
“It’s designed to empower students to make the call of whether or not there is an alcohol poisoning, medical-related emergency going on,” Fallis said.
Wyatt said there are already some alcohol awareness programs at California colleges but that there wasn’t much of an on-campus presence, something the organization seeks to change.
Aware, Awake, Alive plans to train people in the CSU system to do presentations on each of the campuses, according to Fallis. He said the right people are already in place; it’s just a matter of getting them together and making it happen.
The program has grown via word of mouth within the CSU system and is already available to students on eight of the 23 campuses, including SLO and Cal State Long Beach, according to Fallis.
Fallis said the CSU doesn’t have a planned timeline for implementing the program system-wide but that the program will be available at all campuses as quickly as possible. Wyatt said the organization would like to see it fully operating by Week of Welcome, which is held the second week of fall semester.
Aware, Awake, Alive’s resource toolbox can be accessed online at www.awareawakealive.org/toolbox.
