… August” was a 22-year-old student with Prozac, alcohol, and morphine in her system. The local coroner was astonished by the morphine: “It’s hard to get ahold of.”
Chico State has long been at the cutting edge of drug and alcohol deaths and injuries at American universities. I’m not sure why certain schools get this way. I’d guess that after awhile a place gets a reputation and starts attracting freshmen who’ve already been addicts for years. (See the first Chico student interviewed in this pretty good Chico State film.)
Three deaths in three months; and a hard-to-get drug showing up in the latest death. It’s ominous.
October 19th, 2012 at 4:11PM
I suffer from the academic’s tendency to overintellectualize everything, and so it’s worth remembering that what really matters here are three dead young people.
But it’s also worth noting how persistent institutional culture can be. Playboy’s first list of “top party schools,” way back in 1987, had Cal State-Chico as #1.