Students of Cartmel College have been warned against the perils of drinking “excessive” amounts of alcohol following the necessity for three ambulances to attend to students of the college over the weekend at the end of Week 5.
Vicki Haslam, Senior Advisor for Cartmel College sent an email to all students following “a few incidents recently, involving Cartmel students becoming excessively drunk and potentially or actually putting themselves in serious danger.” She referenced two incidents with students during this term stating how “both [students] were choking on their own vomit while unconscious, too drunk to save themselves” describing how were it not for “the prompt actions of a JCR member (in the first case) and a College Porter (in the second case)” two students “would have died this term.”
Haslam advised students to visit the drink aware website, admitting that, “I know that many of you like to have a few drinks, but please be careful not to go completely mad – it’s really not worth it.”
Joel Pullan, President of Cartmel College stated that the issues had “alerted” them to “the fact that people are either being reckless or don’t know the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption – both of which can have severe consequences.” Pullan stated that the JCR have “already taken steps” to “make sure the students in Cartmel are aware of the dangers, to hopefully reduce the number of future incidents.”
SCAN spoke to Rosalia O’Reilly, Vice President (Equality, Welfare & Diversity), about the recent problems in Cartmel and she admitted that the pre-drinking culture was a problem not just at Lancaster but at all UK Universities. O’Reilly commented that Lancaster had been trying “to combat this through campaigns such as Easy Tiger” stating that they “give out food vouchers, promote the ‘eating isn’t cheating’ message – we also gave out hundreds of glasses over intro week that show proper units and measurements on to ensure students aren’t just leaving their measures to guess work in an attempt to put a stop to excessive pre drinking.”
With regards to the incidents in Cartmel O’Reilly felt that it was “very disturbing to hear accounts of such dangerous alcohol abuse on our campus, and I would urge students to support one another and ensure they aren’t putting pressure on their friends to drink more than they can handle. Also, stop using ‘alcohol bins’, they are really dangerous and impossible to monitor.”
