It was supposed to be a night to catch up on all the fun he had missed. It was supposed to be a celebration after finishing his last final exam for the year. It was supposed to just be good old horseplay in the house — while drunk, of course.
Daniel Tratt, then a junior at Binghamton University, accomplished all that he had wanted to on Tuesday night, May 12, 1999, with the addition of one more thing — a 23-foot nearly-fatal fall off of a staircase that resulted in a brain injury, broken ribs, a crushed spine and lung, 18-months of agonizing rehabilitation and permanent paralysis of his lower body.
ON A MISSION
“I believe things happen for a reason,” said Tratt, after wheeling himself up a ramp onto the platform in the Mandela Room on Sunday night to speak to over 300 students. “If there’s a reason why it’s happened, it’s so I can come here to talk to you.”
The audience, mostly composed of fraternities and sororities, came to hear Tratt speak about binge drinking at an event sponsored by Chabad House Jewish Student Center and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs.
“We felt he had a strong message,” said Rivkah Slonim, education director of Chabad House, the group responsible for choosing the speaker.
Jack Causseaux, the greek life advisor who helped organize the event, added that binge drinking is a concern across campus.
Tratt’s drinking career started while he was a teenager and escalated when he came to BU. “When I got to college I had no one to answer to,” said Tratt, who studied marketing and business. “I had freedom. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Getting involved with a fraternity “supplied people to drink with,” he said, “but by that time my drinking problem was already in place.”
Tratt, now 27, is currently a high school teacher in the Bronx. He is a motivational speaker with a mission to tell his story and warn about the danger of peer pressure, binge drinking and the possibility of “the tragic accident I went through,” he said. “I hope I’m able to affect somebody’s life.”
BINGE DRINKING AND THE COLLEGE CAMPUS
“What happened with this particular incident is a symptom of a greater problem,” said Gerard Johansen, associate director of BU’s Alcohol and Other Drug Program. “We pretty much parallel the rest of the country when it comes to the number of students who cross the threshold [into binge drinking]” said Johansen, citing that one in three male college students binge drink.
Tratt’s talk also struck a cord with students who are in the midst of the common college experience.
“It makes me think about Binghamton University and the fraternity system,” said Gigio Ninan, a member of Sigma Beta Rho, a multicultural fraternity that includes some members that abstain from alcohol for religious reasons. “There are a lot of brothers in my fraternity who withhold from drinking. I wish everybody could be like that.”
Tratt’s effort to spread his message was evident as he fervently spoke to the audience that night. And his goal was clear: “[so] you can walk away with something you can hold on to.”