Marc Apesos
Contributing Writer, Print Journalism
For this unnamed sophomore, 20, from New York, his drinking culture started early.
“I had it [fake ID] since I was a junior in high school, it works pretty much everywhere. We’ve been buying beer from Wal-Mart since the first couple weeks of orientation, they don’t do anything,” he said.
In New Hampshire being caught owning or using fake identification could result in a 2,000 dollar fine or up to a year in prison according to criminaldefenselawyer.com.
When asked if he knew this, he said, “I seriously doubt they’d take it that far for buying some ‘racks,’” he said. “The cops should bust kids who throw the shopping carts in the river instead of us who contribute to the economy.”
The student said he spent 40 dollars a week on beer and vodka; roughly 600 dollars a semester on alcohol.
He estimated he drinks “about ten to fifteen beers a night” throughout the weekend, starting on Thursday.
He recalled one night when his excessive drinking led to a street fight on Blake Street last year.
He said his drink that night was a 750 milliliter bottle of Jägermeister.
His friends, who were visiting from his hometown, had their own bottles.
“We were pretty hammered and some kids came up and started talking [expletive] to my friend from home. I don’t even remember how it started, but there was some pushing and yelling on this guy’s porch,” he recalled. “I was inside at this point but I heard my friend shoved this kid down the steps and all of his friends just started jumping on him.”
He said that there were “four or five kids” punching his friend.
“Two of my friends who were on the porch with him tried to pull them off but it just turned into a fight at that point.”
“I walked out and saw two of my friends were in the middle of the street just brawling it out,” he said.
“It all happened so quick . . . I ran down and started shoving these kids off of my buddy . . . I remember some kid came up behind me and punched me in the back of the head, and I whipped around and started throwing shots back . . . It was a [expletive] mess.”
“Tons of people were crowding around and just watching us. The fight pretty much calmed down when it got busy. My buddy and two other dudes who were just yelling and pushing each other at that point.”
“It probably lasted about two minutes,” he said.
He estimated about 50 people observed the fight from the side of the road.
“It was just a stupid second of drunken anger, nobody got hurt . . . But the funny thing was I lost my shirt, I think somebody ripped it straight through,” he said.
He said he doesn’t remember much of the details or even why he was fighting, but he did say everybody involved was “completely blasted.”
Ironically, “I never saw those kids again, I don’t think they even go here,” he said, when asked if he’s ever run into the students he fought that night.
He continued, “There are definitely huge groups of guys that come visit and just go around looking to talk [expletive] and look for fights, I don’t think it would happen between Keene students. I’m sure it has, but not often.”
Last year, he said that he and a friend were arrested at the University of Vermont campus for effluence or, in his words, “pissing in public.”
“We just left a party and we were looking for a place to go to the bathroom. So, we decided to go behind a dumpster when a cop car pulled up behind us with its lights off,” he said.
“We were lucky that we didn’t have alcohol on us, but they still made us go back to the station.”
“They asked if we were drinking and we told them yes, but they still put us down for effluence [charge] and we had to get a lawyer and everything, lucky the charges were dropped,” he said.
