A new craze is sweeping Chico State. It’s edgy, shocking and revolutionary.

The Red Watch Band has hit the streets of downtown Chico thanks to the Campus Alcohol and Drug Education Center, which has inspired and trained students to take a stand against alcohol abuse in bars full of intoxicated drinkers who are sometimes one shot away from death.

These trendsetters will be sporting red watches down Ivy Street by Riley’s, which hosts “power hour,” an infamous drinking special. They’ll walk past LaSalles, where people can buy bunches of vodka cranberry pitchers for a pittance. And they’ll patrol past University Bar, which offers dollar drinks on Wednesdays.

They are trained to call paramedics before it’s too late, rather than beating around the bush before letting authorities know. This happened in 2008 with 18-year-old Carson Starkey, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student who died from alcohol poisoning after his frat brothers abandoned a trip to the hospital for fear of getting their fraternity in trouble, according to the website for Aware Awake Alive, an anti-binge drinking foundation established in the wake of his death.

Furthermore, the Red Watch Band program teaches students cardiopulmonary resuscitation, so students know how to take care of someone lying lifeless after having way too much to drink. Considering all the alcohol-related deaths there have been during this last year in Chico, it’s no wonder the Red Watch Band is gaining traction throughout our campus.

Students like Brett Olson, Marissa Madrid, Mason Sumnicht, Carly Callaghan, Carson Starkey and Shaun Summa could’ve all been saved if someone had kept them from making the wrong decisions, or intervened at the first sign of trouble.

And this new form of prevention isn’t solely reserved for Chico State. All across America, Red Watch groups are spreading as alcohol-related problems afflict a college-aged population.

Each year an estimated 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 to 24 die from excessive alcohol consumption, including motor vehicle crashes, according to a study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

In addition to the very real risk of death, binge drinking is associated with other problems, including an estimated 599,000 injuries and 97,000 instances of sexual assault each year, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

These statistics clearly show a demand for students to start redesigning their current lifestyle choices. Chico needs people who are willing to defy the poor behaviors accepted in our college environment and step up to intervene when students pass out from drinking too much, because they may not just “sleep it off.”

We need to de-glorify binge drinking and reveal it for what it is: a major cause of death among college students.

Performing CPR isn’t trendy, and it’s no one’s idea of glamorous.

It’s more like wearing drab, shapeless pantsuits with headache-inducing Hawaiian print frocks.

But for now, the color red is the new “it.”

Paul Smeltzer can be reached at [email protected] or @beneathecracks on Twitter.