Late-Night Oxy Students' Bash Ends Badly For 4

If you stand in the quad on the campus at night and look at the coliseum-like steps leading up to a number of stately buildings, it’s easy to imagine that you’re somewhere else—in some ancient capital of Europe, say.

And if you’re a student having too much fun at the annual Toga Party on the quad, it’s also easy to succumb to what’s perhaps the foremost health threat on college campuses in America—binge drinking.

At this year’s toga on Saturday, October 8, four students evidently got so carried away by the festive atmosphere that they ended up with alcohol poisoning at the Glendale Adventist Hospital emergency room.

Passed Out on the Quad

According to a report in the student-run Occidental Weekly newspaper, first brought to the attention of non-college audiences by the Eastsider LA blog, paramedics responded to an incident of alcohol poisoning shortly before midnight, less than two hours after the party’s scheduled start. They found a student passed out on one of the lawns on the quad.

Two more students were subsequently rushed to the hospital and treated for alcohol poisoning—and a “fourth student who required transfer had consumed alcohol, but required transfer due to a fall and subsequent injury,” the Oxy weekly said, adding: “It is possible that more students had to go to the hospital, but these are the only four incidents reported, according to Campus Safety.”

A Lot Better Than Last Year's Toga

This year’s official toga toll was a lot lower than last year’s, when as many as 13 students were hospitalized because of alcohol-related problems, according to the paper—a figure that Oxy’s Director of Communications Jim Tranquada confirmed.

“It was definitely better than last year," the Weekly quoted Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Life Tamara Rice as saying. "I know a lot of people are describing it as a s--t-show, but from my perspective, because I've seen now four of them, I think it was one of the better ones because I do think for the most part that students were keeping it in and were able just to have some fun.”

Still, there’s talk that college authorities might cancel next year’s toga because one Tiger too many had—one too many. (The Center for Disease Control defines binge drinking for men as having five or more drinks, and for women as consuming four or more drinks, on at least one occasion.)

Although there’s no official word yet on the matter, let’s hope Oxy’s fraternities and sororities, which fund and organize the annual bash, have learned a lesson.