One would think that Public Safety would have gotten the message by now. Every weekend, at least one person is transported to the hospital from the same building in North Quad with potential alcohol poisoning. Over the course of this semester, over 20 people from this building have been transported to Waltham Hospital for alcohol-related problems. Many others, however, do not get transported to the hospital and end up barfing whereever they happen to stumble in their drunken stupors - which is often not the bathroom.Eventually, it'll probably be more efficient to park an ambulance on Friday and Saturday nights directly in front of the building in North Quad, and administer blood-alcohol tests to students as they are returning from parties. If the level is higher than it should be, people should be directed - or hoarded - into ambulances and not even given a chance to puke all over the hall.

Sometimes, especially when it's the same person who empties his dinner into the bathroom trashcan two days in a row, I think that these people enjoy the ambulance ride to the hospital. Or, they like the 500 meters of scenic construction en route to Waltham Hospital. Even better, they love burdening their friends with the decision of whether the situation is urgent enough to warrant a call to BEMCo. But, best of all, they get a rush out of burdening the resident advisers (RA), who have done a phenomenal job with coping and making so many hospitals visits. It's a safe wager that the RAs haven't gone to sleep before 4 a.m. any weekend since the first-years arrived on campus. With the amount of close calls this building had, I am really surprised at how well they've held up, because inside it really upset them.

These building mates, apparently, are the prime example of why alcohol isn't legal for people under 21. Their reckless and irresponsible drinking causes many headaches, not to mention a smell that remains in the bathroom for days. That is, until the valiant custodians clean it up Monday morning. It is as if these people will never learn that drinking more than a certain amount of alcohol will make them sick.

Granted that most of the first-years - and these are first-years in the building who are falling ill - have probably never drank, or ever had an opportunity to drink, such vast quantities of alcohol in their lives. Still, health class in high school should have taught them that drinking eight shots in one hour will probably not end well-especially for a neophyte. While these idiots deserve a lot of the blame for not learning from their own or from their friends' mistakes - a recent weekend is a prime example of this-a person vomitted on Friday night, was taken to the hospital on Saturday night, and then puked his guts out again on Sunday. (How did these slow learners ever get into Brandeis?)

Perhaps a bigger problem is not the inability of the students to learn from their mistakes, but the unwillingness of Brandeis to teach them or to take preventative measures. (The legal notion of in loco parentis obligates the university to act as a parent would.) I am not aware of Brandeis' official alcohol policy. I know that Alwina Bennett tells every first-year that "punch is evil." But, based on what I've heard from my RA friends and observed personally in my three semesters, the danger of overdrinking is rarely addressed.

What's worse is that if a person is caught with alcohol in the room, all he gets is slap on the wrist - a talk with the quad director about why that person feels like he has to drink and a mandatory date with TIPS. Although it is important to maintain an atmosphere in which students feel comfortable calling BEMCo when they feel ill, it is also important that people learn from their stupidity. This might mean putting students on housing probation if they repeatedly violate the university's alcohol policy.

Brandeis should proactively approach alcohol education. There should be more visible programs to educate (not cry wolf about the evils of drinking, but educate) students about the dangers of over-drinking. The current system - of working in the background with students who have already made several trips to Walthm Hospital - is inadequate. Education and prevention is the key to solving the problem. Residence life and any other applicable department, should take a strong stance in trying to prevent the frequent trips to the hospital. If there were 20 plus in my building alone, imagine what the numbers are like for the rest of the school.

Don't get me wrong; while I personally do not drink and have not touched alcohol since Manischewitz at my 12th birthday, I am not saying that college students shouldn't drink, however, it is up to Brandeis to educate students about drinking safely. In the meantime, this building should apply for a frequent rider's discount with the ambulance company.