Drinking game, several shots fatal for MSU student

EAST LANSING – Jiayi Dai went shopping at Somerset Collection the day before she died.

She bought shoes and two strawberries covered with Godiva chocolate. That night, after the cab ride back from Troy to East Lansing, she and her friends went to a karaoke bar.

It was Aug. 22. Dai had been on campus at Michigan State University for a short time, preparing for her freshman year.

She had been texting that day with another Chinese student she met only 10 days earlier, a man.

The texts turned to flirting as midnight passed.

"You promised to drink," she texted him.

"Just me alone. You want to drink with?" he replied.

"Drink!" she texted.

"You talk too much. You coming or not?"

"Wait until I finish singing (karaoke)."

"Be there in 10 minutes."

They drank from a bottle of brandy and a bottle of tequila over the course of two hours. Dai, who stood 5-foot-3 and weighed 116 pounds, drank the majority of the liquor, her friend would later tell the police.

She went to bed around 3 a.m. and never woke up. An autopsy determined that her blood-alcohol level was 0.415%.

The details of Dai's last moments, including text messages, were revealed in a police report that was obtained by the Lansing State Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request.

International students at MSU don't drink as much as their American counterparts. That's according to both surveys conducted on campus and to anecdotal evidence from students on campus.

But as Dai's case demonstrates, dangers of binge drinking are nonetheless a reality for the university's growing international population.

International students drink less

MSU officials say they're doing what they need to do to make clear the physical dangers of heavy drinking and the legal dangers of drinking underage in a foreign country. But international students say at least some of their peers drink heavily as a way of bridging the daunting social divisions on an American campus, as a way of fitting in.

At parties, no one forces anyone to drink, said Lu Jun, a sophomore from China, but there is a social stigma that can produce pressure if you don't.

"It is not good that you refuse to drink because (students will ask) why are you so isolated when you know there is drinking here?" she said.

The culture around drinking at MSU is both puzzling and intriguing for Jun.

"I think it is interesting," she said, "and I want to know why people love it."

On average, international students at MSU started drinking at a younger age than their American counterparts. But, as college students, they drink less.

Surveyed last spring as part of the National College Health Assessment, 53% of international students at MSU said they'd had a drink in the past 30 days, compared with 81% of the student body as a whole.

The survey also found that MSU students who drank said they had an average of 5.16 drinks the last time they "partied." The average international student had 3.71.

"My parents don't allow me to drink because we feel it is dangerous for a young woman to drink ... even with friends," said Sue Bing Qing, an MSU student from China.

But she considers herself conservative. She said she has friends that feel they have to drink to fit in.

"(My friend) has to attend meetings and party for 'networking' and the party is all about drinking," she said. "He does not like it but has to do it. It seems like the whole meaning and context of parties is drinking."

And then there are those who like it just fine. Student Xiao Min Li said he prefers playing games while drinking because it is like a competition.

"But you have to be careful because you can end up drinking too much while trying to win," he said.

East Lansing Police Department Lt. Scott Wriggelsworth said the department has not noticed an issue with problem drinking among the growing Chinese student population. Chinese undergraduates are the majority of international students at MSU.

"When looking at it from a statistical point of view, if the number of Chinese students have increased then the number of drinking-related arrests should naturally increase for that particular group," Wriggelsworth said.

"We haven't seen anything to indicate a spike in drinking related arrests from Chinese or any international student groups."

He said education in terms of the consequences of underage drinking needs to be communicated as much as possible because many international students are coming from countries with lower drinking ages, and there has been some confusion.

Christine Bargerstock, associate director of the Office for International Students and Scholars, said educating international students about laws and rules in the United States is something that is stressed at orientation.

Most other countries around the world have a legal drinking age of 18 or lower. It's 18 in China and not always strictly enforced.

"Many other countries do not have specific drinking rules like the United States," she said. "We educate them through large and small group settings and through reminder emails throughout the year."

She said a representative of the Chinese Consulate visited last fall to talk with students about laws in the United States. Rules that are emphasized include the drinking age, drinking and driving and laws against buying alcohol for others, including minors.

Bargerstock doesn't believe there is a clash of culture when it comes to drinking at MSU. There are differences socially, she said, but no reason to think that international students are pressured into drinking heavier to fit in with other students.

"I do not believe international students are learning to binge drink in the U.S.," she said.

Tragedy

Dai's friend, whose name was redacted in police reports, gave her a ride from the karaoke bar in Meridian Township some time after midnight.

Dai was no stranger to the U.S. She spent her last two years of high school in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington, Va., and attended a Lutheran school outside of Minneapolis the year before that. The man told police he had met her through a mutual friend, who wanted him to look out for her and to help her get adjusted to living in East Lansing.

He told police that he got the alcohol from another student in his apartment complex at the 300 block of Pin Oak Lane. He said didn't know if she had been drinking before he picked her up. They played a drinking game with dice. Dai was losing, he said.

"Suspect was extremely distraught, crying, would bang his head on the coffee table and felt extremely responsible and remorseful for what had happened," an officer wrote the morning she died, after the man found her unresponsive and called police.

"Shame on you," Dai had texted to him the night before.

"You shame me?"

"Always not drink with me."

"I will now go pick you up," he replied.

"What will we play?" she texted.

"Dice."

Contact Lansing State Journal reporter Will Kangas: wkangas@lsj.com