By Amanda DeLuise
Last night right before I went to bed I was reading the news on Google (as I usually do) and I came across an article about a Penn State freshman who was found dead yesterday morning between two buildings on campus. He went missing after leaving a frat party and was last seen around 3AM on Sunday morning. Though the police don’t expect any foul play was expected, authorities say the cause of death was head trauma. Dado apparently lost his balance and fell the fifteen feet to his death.
There seems to be more and more cases of these things happening at school all across the country. It’s sad that Dado was just beginning a new chapter in his life when it got cut really short.
Meanwhile, my Saturday night proved to teach me a good lesson about looking out for your friends, especially in college.
We took a trip to Brooklyn (as we often do) and attended a party at a pretty hip looking space with a lot of lasers and a cheap bar. A friend of mine (no names will be named here) got very, very drunk and was in no way, shape or form in any condition to go back to the dorm alone. This happens to everyone sometimes and wasn’t a strange occurrence by any means; sometimes we tend to get overly zealous when given free range over alcohol.
However, we knew by now that even though she said she could make it home, we weren’t going to let her go alone. We were right in our instincts, because as soon as we got to the subway station, she couldn’t stand up anymore. By the time we got on the subway, she was puking at every stop between Morgan Avenue and Union Square. Once we got off the subway, we had to take a cab back to our dorm because she still couldn’t walk. Once we got back home, one of us got her into PJs and put her into bed. The next morning she woke up just fine (sans the bit of hangover headache), wondering how the hell she got home last night.
So the same girl who said she would be fine to go home alone wakes up and is the girl who can’t remember how she got there.
My saturday night, plus reading about Joe Dado’s saturday night, really compelled me to write this blog entry about looking out for each other. Whether you’re a new freshman, or a sophomore, or a junior or whatever, please take care of your friends. It’s no secret that us kids go out and get drunk, but we need to leave it up to each other to make sure we come back okay. To borrow a line from the NYC Subway: “If you see something, say something.”
If you can, take the extra ten or fifteen minutes out of your night to bring someone home who can’t make it on their own. If you’re ever “that” girl or “that” guy, you’d want someone to do the same. If someone had seen Joe Dado leaving the frat party alone and if someone had gone home with him, maybe he would have made it.