Drink Abuse Essay

The Benjamin Wynne Case and how it relates to Millie I. Webb
On the night of August 25, 1997 a tragedy occurred. At Louisiana State University a fraternity held a “bid night” party which is held for young men who have decided to pledge a fraternity. The party was held at a local bar, about a block away from campus, called Murphy’s where the current fraternity president currently held a job. The night began with a keg party at an off-campus apartment and then moved to Murphy’s. In Louisiana the law is that eighteen year olds can enter a bar but of course they cannot drink until they are twenty one. Once they were all inside the bar was when the majority of the heavy drinking took place. There were thirty nine pledges in the bar and to fit in they thought they had to drink until they threw up or passed out. The whole fraternity had access to alcoholic beverages throughout the night because the fraternity president was one of the four bartenders serving that night. Witnesses say they saw active fraternity members forcing alcohol down the mouths of the pledges. The bar even set up large trash cans throughout the bar to be used as puke-stations. A large portion of the pledges had passed out in Murphy’s, Mr. Benjmin Wynne being one of them, and were taken to the fraternity house to sleep off the night before. Later that night a fraternity brother had walked in to check up on the pledges and saw that Mr. Wynne had turned blue and had apparently choked on his vomit. In some reports it was said that the autopsy revealed GHB in Mr. Wynne’s system. The GHB   mixed with the alcohol would have proven fatal because it would have prevented Mr. Wynne from throwing up the abundance of alcohol and GHB in his system.
The fraternity, Louisiana State University, and Murphy’s have been fined large sums of the money for the incident. The fraternity was suspended from 1997 to 2001 and Murphy’s was shut down for some time afterwards. As for Louisiana State University, they had to raise...