Colleges are doing almost nothing to prevent girls being drugged at parties

Everyone remembers their first college party. The lights, the music, all the people they met. I remember mine. It was the weekend before classes started freshman year and I went with some older girls that I didn’t know very well.

I remember walking into the fraternity and thinking wow this is just like in the movies and I remember someone asking me if I wanted a drink. The drinks were being dispensed from drink coolers so I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. I remember dancing for a bit.

But that is all I remember.

After that, it all goes dark. Everything I know after that is from what people told me. I was told that I was very sick. I was told that I had to be carried home at the end of the night. I was told that it was no big deal.

For a long time, I believed I simply had too much to drink that night. I laughed it off. But, I started to realize that something about that night wasn’t right. Since then, I have never experienced anything like that first party.

I was lucky to have people with me to get me home, but a lot of girls are not so lucky. They are called date-rape drugs for a reason. But it’s not always just that – these drugs have also been known to be deadly in some cases.

Fraternities have a reputation for drugging girls on college campuses. Students start to expect an alert email from their college about someone getting drugged or raped the morning after a big fraternity party. But it happens at the bars in college towns too. Just as certain fraternities are known for drugging girls, certain bars are as well. And we just laugh it off and make jokes about it. I bet if you haven’t been drugged yourself, you know someone who has been. So why are college’s not doing more to prevent this? Why are the numbers rising instead of falling?

Many colleges have hotlines for victims and classes in place to teach people to not be a bystander. Girls are told to watch their drinks and to dress a certain way. But where are the classes or emails telling people to not put drugs in other people’s drinks? Why aren’t we showing or telling people the ramifications their actions have on victim’s lives? We need to stop focusing on how victims can prevent these actions and instead focus on stricter consequences for those who drug or rape others. It’s not that hard to be a decent person.

It took me a long time to even realize I had been drugged that night. We need better education for college students on the signs. Many of these signs can be found on the Office on Women’s Health website.

In regards to my own experience being drugged, I have done everything to try to forget the night that I can’t remember. I deleted the pictures. Stopped going to fraternity houses. And stopped talking about that night. I thought it was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone out. I shouldn’t have drank. I should have been more careful. But, it wasn’t my fault. The person who slipped drugs in the drink is always the one at fault.