In the article, “Drinking Deaths Draw Attention to Old Problems” by Mindy Sink, she begins the article with two stories of underage college students who both died of alcohol poisoning and she quotes “less than two weeks apart and an hour’s drive away from one another.” I believe she opens with this to obviously catch the reader’s attention, which certainly it does and to make a statement about how important alcohol abuse is. The introduction of death will always shock the reader into wanting more and makes the story overall more intriguing. I found this compelling mostly, because it was two students my age and trying to experience the same college life as I am. This is most frightening for me, because it puts me in a position to imagine what it would be like if this were to happen to me or any of my friends or classmates. We all barely started to live and to figure ourselves out and it would be terrible for it to all end, just like that, over something that could've been prevented. It also has an enormous effect on me as a reader, because it sets more responsibility for my actions and to be more aware and cautious about things like alcohol abuse.
I think you are totally right. I also think the author starts the chapter out with the deaths to catch the reader's attention and to show how serious this problem is. The line that you quoted shows how just two weeks before Bailey's death, a Colorado State University student had died an hour away. It shows how the death went unseen and how changes were not implemented soon enough. If you don't hear or change policies after a death just an hour away, how can you expect an entire nation where this is a problem to change? We as a nation as become too comfortable with binge drinking on college campuses.
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