New U of M anti-binge drinking poster: "Drink, drank, drunk, dead."

Friends don't let friends drink so much they end up dead.

​U of M officials are taking a page out of the anti-smoking playbook to combat campus binge drinking.

A new series of posters makes the point that friends can help their more-drunk friends avoid some of the worst possible consequences of slamming back a few tee many martoonies.

One poster shows a co-ed resembling Aaron Rodgers lying on the ground, looking wasted. "Drink, drank, drunk, dead," says the top of the poster. The bottom: "Don't let your friend drown in his own puke." If only Robert Plant would've taken that advice...


​The U of M posters -- plastered on campus bulletin boards, in dining halls, and perhaps, in the future, in bathrooms -- make an interesting sort of anti-drunkenness appeal. Anti-binge drinking campaigns often target drinkers themselves, but we've all had that friend or two who just couldn't help themselves and frequently got too drunk. The new U of M campaign appeals to students' sense of altruism in hopes that nobody wakes up from a night of too much drinking in a compromising position... or like John Bonham (although he just never woke up).

Will the posters do any good? WCCO found that it depends which students you ask.

Said Darya Antanovich:

They show these in high school. It's just that these posters are everywhere. It's not something I've never seen before. It wouldn't grab my attention at all.

Ajaj Chamon had a different take:

With the amount of bad decisions made involving drinking. Something like this is probably a good idea. Probably needs to happen around campus.

The anti-binge drinking posters represent the second stage of the U of M's so-called Step Up campaign. The first focused on personal safety -- "He's been prowling around the ATM and something doesn't feel right... You've got a cell phone. Use it. STEP UP" -- and the third will focus on sexual violence.