EARLIER this semester I wrote about upholding the tradition of men wearing ties to home football games. The column garnered lots of mail, deriding me for clinging to a supposedly outdated tradition from days gone by.
There is an outdated tradition related to University football. But it is not the wearing of ties. Rather, it is the life-threatening attempts of fourth-year students to drink a fifth of alcohol before the last home game, otherwise known as the "fourth-year fifth."
With the last home football game of the year this Saturday, I write to ask my fellow fourth-year classmates to be the first class to not have anyone participate in this foolish tradition.
I have seen three classes ahead of me attempt this bacchanalian feat. Nothing about it has ever struck me as particularly admirable. I didn't have greater respect or for those who attempted or finished. Nor did it ever seem all that fun; a great deal of the people I have seen finish the fifth passed out before the game, unable to so much as stumble down the street, let alone stand for three hours in Scott Stadium.
The most pragmatic argument against the tradition is that Saturday's game will be one very much worth watching. This year's football team is the best the University has fielded in recent memory. Despite the fact that Miami has collapsed in recent weeks, the match-up still promises to be an exciting game.
Further, should the Wahoos win this game, they need only beat Virginia Tech to win at least a piece of the ACC title and a possible berth in a BCS bowl. Why anyone would want to drink their way through such a critical football game is beyond me.
But forget about the gridiron implications on the line Saturday. Consuming a fifth of alcohol could very well kill you.
For illustrative purposes, let me share the results of some tinkering I did with an online blood alcohol content calculator. I assumed a 180-pound person, drinking 25.6 one-ounce shots of 80-proof liquor (or the equivalent of a fifth of Jim Beam bourbon) over the course of eight hours (in terms practical to this week's game, from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.).
According to this calculator, that person would have a BAC of .307. To put this in perspective, most sources say that .300 is when death from alcohol poisoning becomes a threat.
The results are even more shocking when assuming a 120-pound person: a BAC of .520. This is a recipe for disaster.
There may be a temptation to do the fourth-year fifth on the basis of peer pressure, that everyone else is going to at least attempt to drink it. The facts bear out a strikingly different picture.
According to last year's U.Va. Student Health Social Norms survey, a scant 10.3 percent of fourth-year students attempted the fifth, with only 6.7 percent actually finishing. That's a 6.1 percent drop from the previous year. In that same survey, a majority of fourth-year students reported not drinking at all before the last football game.
If, in actuality, so few people are attempting to drink the fifth, then why should students, parents and administrators be concerned about its undertaking this weekend? The answer is simple: because the loss of even one student's life to such deadly behavior would be devastating to the community and their loved ones.
That much was evident when Leslie Baltz, a fourth-year undergrad at the University in 1997, died the day of the last home football game after drinking and falling down a set of stairs. Three years later, her mother Vivian delivered a speech at the University, detailing the anguish caused by the death of her daughter and her desire never to have another family go through that experience. Her speech should be required reading for every fourth year considering the fourth-year fifth this week.
I'd like to conclude with a direct plea to my fellow students in the Class of 2005: You and your parents have spent thousands of dollars to see that you have received a quality education. Don't let a $14 bottle of Jim Beam and a sense of "tradition" threaten that education, and your life.
Jim Prosser's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jprosser@cavalierdaily.com.
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