Instructors knew 18-year-old Kevin Johns as a bright, friendly, intelligent student, who had potential to do great things.
Johns died Wednesday when his family decided to take him off life-support after he suffered alcohol poisoning at a Halloween party during the weekend.
The UNM freshman from Window Rock, Ariz., was dared to take 20 shots within an hour at the party, which was held at the 9800 block of Mary Ellen Street. Albuquerque police reported that Johns had taken at least half a dozen shots before being dragged outside and rolled on his side. At around 4 a.m. Sunday he was taken to Presbyterian Hospital.
Both friends and family were upset by the way Johns' alcohol poisoning was reported by local news stations, with one going so far as to call KOB-TV's coverage borderline racist.
"I talked with his mother today, and she told me he's not the type of person the media portrayed him to be, and I agreed," said Jody Ipsen, who was Johns' English 101 instructor this semester. "He was not the type of person who would normally do something like this and just succumbed to peer pressure."
Ipsen said she and Johns became close very quickly after he approached her during the first week of school outside of class about an assignment. The two then spent a lot time together during critique sessions and walking to and from class, she said.
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"He was an excellent student, always very responsive and really very kind," Ipsen said.
Tom Cummings, a student recruiter for the Minority Engineering Program, met Johns at through a four-week summer program. Johns also was in one of Cummings' engineering classes this semester. He said that Johns worked well with his peers, often tutoring those in his Tuesday evening class.
"This was a kid who was thoughtful, worked hard and was focused on doing well," Cummings said. "He was just a great human being with great potential that ended abruptly."
Cummings was upset by the lack of response by UNM and the students who were with Johns at the party.
"I am absolutely appalled that he was subjected to an alcohol-drenched University where others were more concerned with alcohol than their own welfare, much less that of others," Cummings said. "The idea that kids would pressure another student to chug something in the area of 22 shots in less than an hour is absurd. It's just absolute bullshit."
While Cummings said he isn't optimistic that Johns' death will change the University, he said that it does highlight a need for better communication between faculty and students.
"We have a lot of students who, say for example, have a problem in a chemistry class, and you ask them who the professor is and they don't know - that's a serious problem," he said. "There's very little effective communication going on and it is now as much the faculty's responsibility to reach out to these students."
He added that he is aware that many faculty members spend their office hours alone waiting for students, but said that many students don't come because they don't know that their professors have time to meet with them.
"To try to look at this on a positive note, we know that we do have a great deal of promising students, and we as faculty must take the lead here to act as role models and mentors," Cummings said.
In addition to better faculty-student relationships, Cummings said Johns' death illustrates an obvious need for more education about the difference between drinking socially and responsibly and binge drinking.
Ispen lost her brother to alcohol poisoning and reiterated Cummings' emphasis on the importance of educating students about the dangers of alcohol abuse.
"Students needs to be aware that there can be serious consequences," she said. "They think they are invincible, but this should clearly illustrate to us that they're not."
Johns attended Catholic high school in Window Rock and his father told Ispen that he opted to attend UNM over Northern Arizona University because he wanted to be on his own.
Johns' aunt told Ispen that he used to read Shakespeare over the phone to his cousin when they were in high school, prompting Ispen to quote "The Tempest." "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep."
American Indian Student Services is organizing a memorial for Johns next week and a memorial mass will be held in his honor Friday at 12:15 p.m. at the Aquinas Newman Center, 1815 Las Lomas Rd. NE.
