Blog Post #7

Luckily, since my topic is so hot right now I had a variety of cases to pick from. However, I wanted to make my paper relate to myself, not just my audience. The case I chose was the unfortunate case of Caitlyn Kovac. Kovac was a 19 year old, sophomore who attended Rutgers University. Kovac was rushed to the nearby hospital, Robert Wood Johnson, from a long night of partying at the local fraternity house, Delta Kappa Epsilon, because she seemed to be in “distress”, where later she was pronounced dead. According to the county medical examiner’s report, Kovac’s death was caused by an “acute ethanol toxicity”, in other words, alcohol poisoning. This case is directly in favor of the claim I am making in my research paper. I claim that fraternities cause college students to believe that binge drinking is the norm, causing people to believe that it is normal to drink excessively. In my paper, I highlight her case by using the evidence given by Kovac's friends. Her friends claim that Kovac was not a girl who drank an excessive amount. However, she attended a party at a local fraternity party where she engaged in behavior that she did not normally partake in. My paper connects her case with the Social Norm Theory, saying that Kovac did not plan on going to this fraternity house with the mindset of binge drinking. However, when she got there, she observed that the majority of people in her direct environment binge drinking, leading her to believe that this is the norm. It is human nature to want to follow the norm, therefore, Kovac, not being a regular binge drinker, consumed more alcohol than her body could handle, leading to her death.

The research I stated above in regards to the Kovac case can be found here: http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2014/10/rutgers_student_caitlyn_kovacs_died_of_alcohol_poisoning_after_party_autopsy_finds.html