For the majority of this semester, drink spiking has been the talk of the town as the city of Clemson Police Department continues to receive reports. Along with CUPD, Clemson Panhellenic, bar owners and students, city police have made efforts to decrease incidents of drink spiking, but suspects have yet to be identified, let alone arrested, according to recent crime reports.

The Tiger spoke to two anonymous Clemson students who believe they have experienced drink spiking firsthand.

“I was being responsible, not drinking too much and when I woke up the next day and could not remember a single thing that happened, I knew that I had been roofied,” a student at Clemson University told The Tiger.

“Before going to the bar I remember specifically only having one drink at the pregame,” another student said.“Me and a few other people went to Study Hall and I got a vodka cranberry and a shot at the bar.

“I remember before even taking a sip … walking there I was feeling out of it, a different feeling than being too drunk.

“I lost all motor skills, I was slurring words, according to (a) friend, and I lost all consciousness. I truly lost all memory of the entire night. I was throwing up apparently and I wanted to go to bed but no one would let me for safety reasons … When I woke up I was in a “daze” feeling the next day,” the student continued.

City police Chief Jorge Campos visited a Clemson Undergraduate Student Government meeting on Nov. 11 to share information with students and clear up misconceptions on the subject.

“We get a lot of reports of people saying that their drinks must have been spiked because of the symptoms they experience after,” Campos said.

He noted that the police don’t take the complaints lightly, taking them “as seriously as sexual assault.” However, the police must have sufficient evidence before moving forward with anything.

Campos mentioned that in all reported cases of people who have gone to the hospital, the police are unable to find any “traditional, spiking-type of compounds” in lab results. He also noted if a sample is not obtained quickly enough by medical staff, compounds with short half-lives may not show.

“So far, we haven’t really been able to find anything. Again, I’m not going to say that people‘s drinks aren’t getting spiked,” Campos said. He also encouraged quick medical testing if people experience drink spiking symptoms so that the police know where to start investigating.

However, he noted that when police perform follow-ups, they notice that many cases involve excessive drinking.

“If you’re a 90-pound female, soaking wet, and you do seven shots in 45 minutes, yeah, you got drugged. By alcohol. And you probably did it to yourself. Seven shots in 45 minutes would put me under this table, and I’m a lot bigger,” he continued.

Campos believes that people undermine how much they drink at “pregames” before going to bars and noted that people could assume that their drinks were spiked at the bar. In reality, according to Campos, they’re experiencing side effects from excessively drinking at a pregame.

He then noted that people can also experience drink spiking symptoms without excessively drinking by already having other substances in their systems.

Mixing alcohol with marijuana, over-the-counter drugs, prescription drugs and more can cause increased intoxication, according to Bowling Green State University.

“There is a nasty rumor going around today that somebody died because of a drink. I don’t know that anybody has died from a spiked drink. We did have somebody go to the hospital a few weeks back that passed out and thought their drinks were spiked,” Campos said. “There were a number of medical things going on there. The doctors can’t definitively say what caused it, (the police) can’t definitively say what caused it.”

The police did not obtain enough evidence of this incident to move forward with an investigation.

Campos noted the importance of cooperation between downtown bar owners and the police. He also mentioned the benefits of having “very elaborate camera systems” in various bars, as the police are able to check camera footage whenever they receive drink spiking reports.

“If I find information that leads me definitively to someone who is drugging people, I’m going to do everything in my power to put that person in jail. Because it’s wrong,” Campos said, defining drink spiking as an invasion of privacy and assault.

“Nobody deserves to be assaulted,” he said.

Campos noted that all tips sent to Crimestoppers, an anonymous tip line, have been too “nonspecific” to lead to a suspect. The police are offering up to a $3,000 reward if they can obtain enough information from a tip.

On Friday, Nov. 29, the Clemson Panhellenic Council distributed around 400 out of 500 drink spiking defense kits in preparation for possible drink spiking due to the rivalry football game between Clemson and South Carolina. These kits were handed out in partnership between Clemson Panhellenic and the company Overdrive Defense in an effort to combat drink spiking.

During the distribution, many female students who stopped by expressed gratitude for the availability of the defense kits. They also shared concerns regarding the drink spiking downtown, according to Overdrive Defense.