It’s like a twisted game of roulette, in a backwards casino.

At most casinos the house usually wins. Not this one.

The stakes are high here — too high — yet each weekend thousands of ISU students play the game and win. Most never lose.

The game is binge drinking — but it might as well be Russian roulette.

The Editorial Board has played the game. Only one member abstains from drinking, although the rest of us have each risked it all by drinking heavily. 

It would be hypocritical for us to write an editorial suggesting to abstain from drinking. That’s not the point of this, or the five-part culture of drinking series concluding in this issue. But here is the point:

Every once in a while someone throws that little white ball, it spins around and around, lands on your color, on your number — and the house beats you.

You threw it because everyone else was doing it, because they were getting lucky and not feeling the consequences. But in an instant the house takes you for all your worth.

Just ask Shanda Munn. She knows.

Just ask the students who supplied her the alcohol. They know.

You can’t ask Abel Bolanos. He’s gone.

And it’s all because of alcohol. All because they left it up to luck. Like a majority of students on this campus. Like the Editorial Board.

That’s all you have when you are drinking so heavily that you can’t control your actions — luck.

Why leave it to that at all?

Every day students put themselves in worse situations than Bolanos and Munn, and don’t face the consequences.

Most get lucky. 

When you get stopped by the police for a DUI, you got lucky. Someone could have died. When you wake up after blacking out, in your own bed, with your clothes on and your best friend watching over you, you got lucky.

The five-part series was an attempt to start the discussion on campus about our drinking habits.

We wanted to show in a prominent location through statistics, through people, the culture of drinking brewing on our campus.

A culture of gambling that we won’t be unlucky. That we won’t be the one behind bars, the one in need of alcoholic anonymous, the one who gets caught for driving drunk, or the one who is charged with sexual assault.

Stop.

Take some time to think. Think of all the times you’ve been lucky. What if one of those had gone the other way?

We play Russian roulette every weekend. Rarely does the gun go off.

What if it does?

Stop.

Take some time to think — we’re wagering with our lives.