Alabama trashes the LSU Tigers and tailgaters trash the LSU campus: How about bloody marys for brunch?

Number 1 ranked University of Alabama trashed Number 3 ranked LSU on LSU's home field last night.  About 200,000 people were on hand for the debacle: 102,000 in the stadium and another 100,000 tailgaters. The score was 29 to 0. LSU's star field-goal kicker made one attempt for 3 points, but he missed.

In the hours leading up to the game, tailgaters were packed shoulder to shoulder around the stadium, making the campus look something like a Civil War army camp. Portapotties and trash cans were overwhelmed, and picnickers squatted on the sidewalks because there was no room for them on the lawns.

On the morning after game day, the crowds were gone, save for a few dozen recreational vehicles (each costing about a quarter of million). Shades were drawn in the RVs, but the generators were running, so the owners must have been inside, sleeping off their hangovers.

And shortly after dawn, the cleanup crews were out early picking up thousands of discarded beer cans, plastic cups, and styrofoam fast-food containers. LSU used to hire prison trustees to do this work, but the optics were bad. This morning, young people are picking up the trash, perhaps LSU student volunteers.

Big disappointment. If only LSU could have knocked off Alabama and its satanic football coach, Nick Saban. If LSU coach Ed Ogeron had pulled it off, the fans would certainly have erected a statue in his honor, a statue even larger and gaudier than the one Alabama installed for Saban. But it was not to be.

No matter. Lots of Baton Rouge restaurants offer Bloody Mary brunches on Sunday, and it least one restaurant includes all-you-can drink mimosas for folks nursing hangovers.  And then the Saints play the Rams on Sunday afternoon--an opportunity to drink Bud Lites and eat chicken fingers--chicken fingers that Coach Ogeron personally endorses.

Fall is the season of bacchanal in South Louisiana. Let's get drunk for every LSU game, every Saints game, and every playoff game.  Let's get drunk at the fraternity hazing exercises. After all, hardly anyone dies from alcohol poisoning.

And then spring comes--another season of bacchanal. Mardis Gras parades start at least two weeks before Fat Tuesday, and the St. Patrick's Day parade is another occasion for a huge town drunk. The garbage trucks follow closely behind the St. Patrick's Day floats, sweeping up the discarded beads and beer bottles.

A friend told me he attended a Mardis Gras parade in New Orleans a few years ago. A drunk driver, driving a beer truck as it happened, plowed into a crowd of spectators, killing a woman who was pinned under the vehicle. My friend said he saw revelers crawl under the truck and loot the woman's Mardis Gras beads. The corpse was still warm.

Fox Business Report assures us daily that the economy is booming with record-low unemployment and a robust growth in wages. In Baton Rouge, people drive around in late-model luxury cars and pack the restaurants every night.

Cheaply built apartment complexes are being thrown up willy nilly for LSU students in the flood plain next to the Mississippi River levees. They feature swimming pools, and enormous television screens in the common areas. Meanwhile LSU passed a rule requiring most first-year students to live on campus, and it built its own faux-luxury residence halls to accommodate them.

But in North Baton Rouge, weekend killings are routine. A six-year-old was shot dead a couple of days ago, and thirteen-year-old was arrested.  Baton Rouge schools are a mess, and almost no one of means will put their children in a public school.

The rich go to private schools, and the less well-to-do buy inexpensive homes in adjoining parishes where the schools are better. They drive to work every morning on Interstate 10, which is a parking lot from 7:30 AM until about 10 AM on workdays.

But the commute is not so bad. You can check your cell phone when the traffic grinds to a halt or listen to Stuart Varney on Fox Business Report tell you how much money we're all making in the stock market.

Nick Saban's statue at University of Alabama
Photo credit: David Mercer, USA Today

An anti-hazing foundation? Fraternity hazing will stop when hazers go to prison

Last August, Stephen and Rae Ann Gruver, a Georgia couple, sent their son Maxwell to LSU, where he pledged Phi Delta Theta fraternity. One month later, Max was dead, killed in a hazing episode. He had been forced to drink 190 proof alcohol in a fraternity exercise cynically titled "Bible study."

According to the coroner, Max had massive amounts of alcohol in his system at the time of his death--more than six times the legal limit. Experts said he asphyxiated in his own vomit but probably died painlessly because he was unconscious when he passed away.

Max's parents did what many parents do when they lose a child to a a senseless death; they threw themselves into a heroic effort to prevent others from dying the way their son did. In Max's honor, the Gruvers started an anti-hazing foundation, dedicated to raising public awareness about college hazing. They also distributed 30,000 silicon wristbands that say "Stop the Hazing."

In addition, the Gruvers endorsed a law that will grant "medical amnesty" to anyone who reports acute alcohol poisoning as a medical emergency. And they are calling for more transparency about fraternity hazing. If they had known about Phi Delta Theta's history of hazing, the Gruvers say, they never would have allowed Max to pledge that group.

LSU officials publicly support the Gruvers' efforts. I'm sure they were particularly pleased to hear the Gruvers' call for more transparency because "transparency" is a word college administrators dearly love. It rolls over the tongue so smoothly, like a single-malt scotch. And when college administrators use that word--and they use it often--they are never telling the truth.

Already, LSU is equivocating about some of the Gruvers' demands. Ernie Ballard, a school spokesperson, pointed out the problems with amnesty. "Every university struggles with the balance of amnesty and penalties," Ballard explained. If too many conditions are attached to amnesty, students discount its value. On the other hand, "if the amnesty is too broad, habitual offenders may not be held accountable."

LSU president F. King Alexander and Governor John Bel Edwards are talking about tougher penalties for fraternity hazing. But they are "concerned" that tougher sanctions might deter students from reporting bad behavior.

Apparently then, hazing is a conundrum--requiring long and tedious deliberation.

But here is the truth about fraternity hazing. More than forty states already have anti-hazing statutes, some of them dating back more than half a century. And many of these statutes contain amnesty or immunity provisions.

And the Clery Act, passed more than 25 years ago, requires all colleges and universities to file annual reports of criminal activity, including assaults, as a condition of receiving federal funds. The Clery Act was put in place to ensure transparency on college campuses--the very thing the Gruvers are demanding.

Nevertheless, in spite of anti-hazing statutes and the Clery Act, four college students died this year from hazing or criminally negligent drinking episodes.

Hazing won't stop on college campuses until the hazers are sent to prison. If one LSU fraternity boy were sent to Angola State Prison for pouring 190 proof alcohol down some poor kid's throat, LSU would have a lot less hazing.

And hazing won't stop until the universities are held liable for damages when hazing occurs. LSU has anti-hazing policies on its books, and it is willing to deliver a slap on the wrist to fraternities when hazing is discovered. But how much more serious would LSU be about hazing if the Gruvers obtained a quarter-of-a-billion dollar judgment against it?  A lot more serious, I warrant.

The Gruver tragedy will soon be forgotten. A few months from now, the local district attorney will conclude he has more important things to do than prosecute college boys for hazing. A deal will be struck of some kind, and no one will go to jail. LSU or some of its wealthy supporters will make a generous donation to the Max Gruver Foundation, and the Gruvers won't sue.

And next year, or two or three years from now, another college boy will die in his own vomit at a fraternity hazing exercise.  And then we will hear another call for more transparency.

Angola State Prison, where LSU hazers belong

References

Rebekah Allen. 'He would have done great things with his life.' 2017.The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, December 30, 2017.

Rebekah Allen, Grace Toohey, and Emma Discher. 10 booked in LSU fraternity hazing death case. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 12, 2017, p. 1.

Lela Skene. LSU fraternity pledge Maxwell Gruver's 'off the charts' blood-alcohol level shocks experts. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 11, 2017.