One of features of the blogging is that it's easy to pretend that nothing you write really matters. It's easy to approach every situation from an aloof, unemotional vantage point that assumes all your readers will be detached as well -- or at least not intimately involved with the topic at hand. That's not always the case, however, as two comments to my earlier post about Gordie Bailey illustrate. I wrote that Mr. Bailey, a Colorado University freshman who died from alcohol poisoning, was responsible for his own death because he was an adult who freely chose to engage in harmful activities to impress his friends. I never really considered that anyone involved in the event could come across my post, but I recently received two comments, one from one of Mr. Bailey's best friends and one from his step-father. They wrote:
Michael-I stand by my earlier position on the matter, but I feel bad about inflicting additional pain on people who loved Mr. Bailey. Was my first post wrong or irreponsible? Was I out of line?
First of all, a death of someone as special as Gordie, whom you never had the privaledge of meeting, should be mourned, not criticized in a negative way towards him. If you have any clue how offending it is to someone like me who was one of his best friends to hear some heartless fucking asshole critiquing whether it was his death was his fault or not. It hurts. Who the hell are you to try and call my friend out for drinking too much. I am in a fraternity, I am a pledge, I understand how peer pressure works. Not just peer pressure, but FRATERNITY pressure. Can you say the same? Why don't you get a life and mind your own damn business, if you have a problem feel free to call me out on it.Posted by: Bradley at October 18, 2004 10:36 PM
I understand your "job" is to be on the unpopular side of an issue to foster conflict, so I take your comments as intended. I admire you sir if you educated your kid(s) before they went off to college to the fatc that they are totally responsible for their actions, even if it is after only 30 days on campus, and they have not yet learned their tolerance for hard alcohol chased with wine finished in 30 minutes if they want to join the "band of brothers" because they typically drank beer, and they are trusting people thinking no one would do them harm as that was the way their high scholl friends treated them. Unfortunately, most of us parents aren't as foresighted as you, and most of us, even today, do not know you can die of alcohol poisoning. You do a great service to us all to blame it on the 18 year old freshman. That way we, society, don't have to change things, except tell our kids that alcohol can kill, not just while driving a car. I wish we could all truly be as smart as you appear to be. Thanks for simplyfying the answer to our problems.
Michael Lanahan
Posted by: michael lanahan at October 28, 2004 03:52 PM
I think alcoholism is a huge problem in our country (and around the world), and it doesn't do anyone any good to shift blame off the drinkers. In the first post I closed by saying, "I'm sorry to say so, Mr. Lanahan, but Gordie's death was meaningless" -- and it was meaningless in the sense that, despite Mr. Lanahan's claims, neither the university nor the fraternity should bear any legal responsibility for Mr. Bailey's death or learn any "lessons". However, if we as a society choose to rightly attribute blame rather than attempt to shift it onto others, perhaps Mr. Bailey's death can serve an an example to other young adults and scare/encourage them to take responsibility for their own lives.
The first comment is simply an emotional outburst.
As for Mr. Lanahan's response - he does allude, but not call out - a point not mentioned in the original article. Baily was 18, and not legal drinking age, and providing alcohol to minors is illegal in every state. The reason the drinking age was raised is that we, as a society, have decided that 18 year olds are not responsible enough yet to drink alcohol (unless they are in the armed forces, in which case they can drink on base - go figure that one out).
That being said, I agree with your original post - we are all ultimately responsible for our own actions. But we live in a society where someone else is always to blame, and we have plenty of lawyers around to find the deep pockets to pay for that blame.
I thought how you expressed your opinion in the earlier post was needlessly cold and brutal.
If someone is considering jumping off a bridge and I encourage them to do it, I might not be legally responsible for their death but my unrepentant act might keep me from heaven.
You could have at least closed with, "his death was meaningless but his life was precious."
I had a similar experience last spring. I put a throw away link in a post calling a local teacher an idiot for something he had done that made the news. Turns out he was a regular reader of my blog and he left me a comment. In my case I was out of line, apolagized in another post. Since then I have even gone to observe one of his classes for a school assignment.
It still suprises me that people I don't know read my blog.
Unlike me, your post was right on, and while it is a shame that you upset someone I encourage you to stand by your beliefs.
A different, even more impersonal perspective:
I'm in the actuarial biz, and I look at mortality tables a lot. One common feature to actuarial tables (even non-U.S.) is that males have a huge jump up in mortality over the ages of about 14-24; no such trend is seen in female tables (females have lower mortality than males at all ages - even first year of life). Then it settles for awhile, until general aging mortality in the 30s trends up for both males and females. This trend has been around for a very long time.
I call that period of mortality the "stupid ages", when almost all of this additional mortality comes from violent deaths - whether accidents, homicides, or suicides. Accidents, of course, outweigh the other two. Some of it is not just guys stupidly putting themselves in the way of danger, but also that young guys are more likely to go into dangerous professions, like construction, logging, police, army, race car driving, etc (though that doesn't explain the 14-18 mortality).
So yes - if we want to learn a lesson, it's that you shouldn't drink to get drunk. It's idiotic and you could kill yourself really quick, even without a car. But I think the "don't do stupid stuff" message is going to be lost on a lot of guys this age. This behavior goes back at least a hundred years (that's how long Social Security has tables for... one must factor in war years, though. WWI and WWII has huge effects in male mortality... though the Spanish Flu had even higher effects). Anyway, just a different point of view on the matter.
I think your original post was a bit on the callous side but it was precipitated by the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the university. Your points were accurate in that regard. But even if we lose someone dear to us due to their own stupidity, it still hurts bad.
I can't imagine the pain the friends and family of Gordie must be going through. The fraternity certainly deserves some blame for allowing a minor to drink. I feel for their grief, and grief tends to make people illogical in the extreme. In addition to their grief they are embarrassed because Gordie's death has brought shame to their family and interrupted their plans for their life with him. The publicity surrounding his death has made him a topic of discussion. Since Gordie was not previously a topic of discussion, the fact that he suddenly is, coupled with the simultaneous grief and embarrassment, produces reactions like theirs to your reasonable argument that 18-year-olds in general should know better. I don't think your post upset them so much as life events did, and you just stepped into the breeze of the fan that the crap was already hitting. Maybe that was stupid; I don't know. They say fools go in where angels fear to tread.
Nevertheless, your arguments are correct. 18-year-old people should already know that alcohol can kill (I remember, in high school health class, being asked to calculate how many drinks would put me over the legal limit and how long I'd have to wait before I could safely drive). They have neither a need nor a right to "[learn] their tolerance for hard alcohol chased with wine finished in 30 minutes", as if it were something people routinely discover about themselves. Parents have an obligation to at least go through the motions of teaching their children to withstand peer pressure when it's important, and to remove themselves from situations where they feel they cannot withstand the pressure.
Michael, as a former out-of-control drinker, I can not stress enough that this boy's father's desire to see the people and institutions around his son held accountable, are the kind of behaviour that can actually encourage drinkers to keep on drinking.
I did not begin to recover until I assumed 100% responsibility for my actions!
It is sad that this boy died, and I feel for his father. That being said, the truth is, his son paid the ultimate price for his own bad choice. No one "made him do it".
This "blame everyone" society is dangerous, and leaves us with the false impression that "society at large" is to blame for our screw ups, and that we are merely "victims".
His father is devastated, and just wants his boy back. That is just par for the course right now. Do not be shaken by those two posts, Michael. It's important (and a rare quality, I might add) for one to stand up and speak truth, even in the face of adversity.
Sorry Michael, but i'm not buying it. The kid was responsible for his own actions, but at the same time, the fraternity and the ridiculous culture around it is also responsible to some extent. I mean really, is ANYONE surprised to hear that yet ANOTHER frat pledge has died of alcohol poisoning? Is anyone ever surpirised to hear of another rape in a frat house? It is a sick culture.
As far as his best friend's comment, where was he when his friend was killing himself? Blaming the peer pressure in a frat? Give me a break! If he didn't feel the need to buy his friends he wouldn't be in that situation to begin with.
His parents? If they hadn't raised him to go along with that forced macho crap that DEFINES fraternity life thier son might still be alive.
As far as i'm concerned, the gene pool is now a little bit cleaner.
One of the common always-wrong answers on the multistate bar exam is any answer that says Person A is not liable because Person B is. I think that's true not only legally, but morally, as well. Yes, Gordie is responsible for his own bad choices. No, that doesn't absolve the fraternity for sticking to a hazing ritual that they knew to be dangerous, and which was also rightly illegal. Whether or not the university should also be held liable is a tougher question, which depends on facts that may not be known at this time (did/should the university know the frat was hazing, did they do anything to try to stop it, etc.).
A tough one all around. Sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it. (Don't tell my mom I quoted her.) I think you are right Michael on the issue, but be sensitive to the loved ones.
XLRQ makes the point I made in the comments to the original post. Responsibility is not a zero sum game. Obviously, the young man was responsible; obviously, the fraternity was responsible. Focusing on young man's responsibility tends to exonerate others from their obvious lack of prudence. It's kind of like the situation when people talk about personal responsibility and bankruptcy law. I always agree with them and observe that banks should be more responsible about who they extend credit to.
But the deeper issue that we all have to pay attention to as bloggers is that we are kibbitzing on the real lives of real people. It's great fun and we should learn from it, but they are living their lives - or not - as best they can and we're just providing gratuitous commentary. This medium of communication is incredibly impersonal. We sit in our rooms or offices and we type out our thoughts. We can easily depersonalize the traumatic experiences of others. My only recommendation is one that I try to live by, and fail to live by repeatedly - try to be charitable. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Say to yourself, there but for the grace of God go I. I think that anyone who writes with charity will never have to regret anything they've written as being either hasty or mean.
Well, it bugged me last night when I first read this post, and I woke up thinking about it, so perhaps comment is merited.
I had the bittersweet good fortune (if you can call it that) of learning about the reach of blogs pretty early on and via a post with which the grieving father agreed. I winced when I read your original post, Michael. Frankly — with due respect and qualifying apologies — I thought that, for the sake of a turn of phrase and strong closing line, you rubbed your thumb in the pain of the incident. And who is more likely to Google a name than a grieving parent?
I'm constitutionally against the reduction of every tragedy to a litigable claim; it turns a profit on the death and stands little chance, in my opinion, of teaching a lesson to anybody who hasn't already learned it. The problem, in this case, is much bigger than an individual or group of individuals, and I find it difficult to believe that young adults (generically speaking) who are sufficiently irresponsible that the prospect of death doesn't sober them will probably not respond to the added threat of a lawsuit.
That said, there's plenty of blame to go around. Particularly considering that the boy was 18, there's an individual and an environment that allowed (encouraged) somebody under age to procure and misuse alcohol.
I'd say that part of the environment, ironically enough, is fostered by the drinking age's being 21. At the very least, kids will spend the years before that learning about drinking second hand. Personally, I don't think we'll ever stop them from actually doing it themselves. Placing that buffer zone when most kids are 1) learning to be independent and free for the first time and 2) legal adults creates a set of motivations and disincentives that is prone to dire consequences.
Consider that probably everybody at that party was behaving illegally in some fashion or other. Does that make it more or less likely that they'll step forward to be responsible — especially when they haven't the experience to know when the damage to somebody else can't be slept off?
With respect to parents, the drinking age effectively closes their window for strong "hands on" lessons about responsible drinking. A few years ago in Rhode Island, a father was arrested for allowing his son to host an all night graduation party in the backyard. The father locked all the gates and took all car keys; had he not done so, he could have claimed ignorance about the presence of alcohol.
My heart and prayers go out to Mr. Lanahan, although I agree with Michael in the suggestion that redirecting blame from the young man distracts from the problem. That said, I think pinning the responsibility so forcefully onto the individual kid does the same.
You're simply not going to "scare/encourage" kids of that age, in our culture, into taking responsibility for their own or others' lives. We can teach them, as one solution, but more fundamentally, we need to change the culture, and that's going to involve realistic assessment of who will do what when and why.