As of Oct. 17, the UW-Madison Police Department has had the most detox commitments in the past three years, according to Chief of Police Susan Riseling, who held a press conference yesterday, at the University of Wisconsin Police Department.
Riseling said that in a six-week period of time, there have been 30 cases of detox commitment by the UWPD alone.
'And you say well, is that a lot? In the same time period last year there were 17, so almost double,' Riseling said.
The UWPD also released open records of the student detox commitments. Descriptions of students committed to detox range from: stumbling and staggering to urinating on oneself, to unconsciousness/unresponsiveness, to vomiting in dorm room.
'What I've seen this fall, in just six weeks, is that close to 30 students had an episode or an incident where they came very close to not making what it is that I want them to do'which is to live to graduate,' said Riseling, who has dealt with the alcohol-related deaths of students in the past.
Students' blood alcohol content in the reports ranged from .10 to .32 to being physically unable to blow into the BAC device.
'These are near-death experiences these students are going through,' Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam said.
'[These situations are] enormously frightening, because you have no idea how to help these people,' said Chancellor Chief of Staff Casey Nagy. 'People aren't aware of what it takes to fall off the edge of the world.'
Another aspect of this past year's amount of detox commitments Riseling wanted the public to note was the average age for commitment has dropped from 20.4 to 18.9 years. Also, by this time in the past three years there had been five home games, but as of 2005 only four.
Thus, there has been a near doubling in detox commitments even with a smaller amount of home games. Almost half of the students committed to detox detailed in the report were apprehended at Camp Randall.
Riseling made clear she was not attacking drinking on campus altogether.
'In the end we're here so that they [students] graduate. That's what it's all about. And along the way it is important to have a good time and to make friends and to have social engagements and to support the Badgers,' Riseling said.
'I don't want to curtail anybody's fun, but I defy pretty much anybody to read these descriptions and make a logical argument that this activity is in any way fun.'
