Drowning theories deny the obvious
5:13 PM 4/21/04

It's a tragic pattern: Another young man's body was pulled from the Mississippi River last week, one of five who've mysteriously disappeared and turned up drowned in the past seven years. <

The talk around La Crosse is that there's some kind of foul play involved, maybe a serial killer at work. But it's just more tragic evidence of the consequences of our state's drinking problem. Every one of these students died after a night of drinking: <

Charles Blatz, a UW-Platteville student who had come to La Crosse for Oktoberfest 1997, was later found floating in the Mississippi main channel. Blood-alcohol content: 0.31 percent. <

Anthony D. "Tony" Skifton, disappeared after a party Oct. 5, 1997, and was found five days later in Swift Creek. BAC: 0.23 percent. <

Nathan Kapfer, a Viterbo College student who disappeared in 1998 after a night of underage drinking, was found six weeks later in Running Slough. BAC: 0.22 percent. <

Jeffrey F. Geesey, a UW-La Crosse student who disappeared in 1999 after nightclubbing in downtown La Crosse, also turned in Running Slough. BAC: 0.42 percent. <

Jared Dion, a UW-La Crosse wrestler, turned up in the river near a levee last Thursday. He'd disappeared after a night of drinking and dancing the previous weekend. BAC: 0.27 percent. <

Two other La Crosse drownings during the past seven years also involved young men, but the circumstances - a bar fight and a fall through the ice - were not at all mysterious. <

All of the cases have been thoroughly investigated. Local police and state investigators have found no evidence of foul play. Yet some people see a pattern that to them is more than coincidence. They are absolutely correct, but their speculation overlooks the real common thread: Heavy drinking, not a waterfront prowler, is the most likely explanation. <

The unnecessary and unhelpful rumormongering about these deaths goes awfully far to deny the obvious: Folks who get drunk and stumble down to the big river end up drowned. In recent years, students at the University of Minnesota and UW-Eau Claire also have turned up drowned after leaving the bars, no crazed killers involved. <

All this is not meant to discount the grief that relatives and friends no doubt feel over the unexpected and untimely deaths of the young men. But rather than call for investigators to waste time looking for crimes that haven't been committed, community members would be better off stepping up efforts to deal with binge drinking and alcohol abuse by underage students. <

Wisconsin's young people enter college already well-schooled in inebriation. Nearly half of Wisconsin high school students drink alcohol, according to last year's Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey. About 30 percent of UW-Madison students in a 2001 survey began bingeing in high school, back when they were supposed to be learning life's rules from trusted adults. <

And that's the root of the problem. In much of Wisconsin, hammering back four or five drinks - which qualifies you as a university binge drinker if you do it every couple of weeks - is considered a mere happy-hour warmup, not the price of admission to Alcoholics Anonymous. Wisconsin continues to exceed national averages in the proportion of adults who drink too heavily. And each year in Wisconsin, substance abuse - alcohol typically being the substance abused - leads to an estimated 2,160 deaths. <

And the real tragedy is that, like most alcohol-related deaths, these drunken drownings could have been avoided. Instead of indulging in speculation, university and community leaders in La Crosse, and elsewhere, must step up efforts discourage excessive drinking by all residents and deter underage overconsumption. <

Learn more: This Web site explains the problem of binge drinking and what you can do about it: www.news.wisc.edu/packages/drinking/