This past weekend three students from the Alpha beta Zeta fraternity were admitted to a local hospital early Sunday morning and were diagnosed with alcohol poisoning.
Press Martin, junior, engineering major; from Shethar, N.D.; Al Amalek, freshmen, liberal arts major; from Nashville, Tenn. And Rob Smith, sophomore, business major from here in town, had been partying at the ABZ house. Martin and Smith were released on Monday morning, but Amalek is still in the hospital and is listed in critical condition.
University president Harvey Smithville gave this statement restated the previous policy that banned alcohol from any fraternity house located on campus property or within campus environs. The policy states: “any fraternity in which the members have alcohol will be immediately suspended. A second offense with a year will result in the banning of that fraternity for five years.”
Interfraternity Council president Bart Addison issued a statement: “We wholeheartedly agree with President Smithville that alcohol has no place at fraternity parties.” The university also released a statement: “Our initial investigation indicates that these young men were at a party in the ABZ house. A number of witnesses say alcohol was being consumed by them. Based on that, we are suspending the fraternity and all its activities on campus. We have not decided how long the suspension will last.” Jan Mize, representative from the universitiy’s public relations department, says that a one-year suspension usually results from these circumstances and actions.
Addison says he does” not believe that the entire fraternity should be held responsible” and he will “ask President Smithville to reconsider his suspension of the ABZ’s.”
1. You may want to double-check spelling and grammar. Capitalize the beta in Alpha Beta Zeta, correct the spelling of university in the fourth paragraph, spell out environments, and also change restated in the third paragraph to restating to make more sense and get your point across.
2. Cut out some unnecessary phrases(second paragraph: had been partying at the ABZ house. It’s implied through alcohol poisoning and then again it is mentioned in the fourth paragraph that they were at a party that was happening at their fraternity house).
3. I think you could also break down the fourth paragraph a bit more. You could remove Jan Mize’s quote about the one year suspension since there seems to be more important information throughout the story. You could also remove information about the previous policy since we seem to focus more on what is currently happening. Also double-check on how quotes should be used for your last paragraph.
Overall, I think you did a great job.
1. You’re dramatically overusing quotes. Paraphrase a lot more of that material. Re-read the Stovall section on quotes in Chapter 5.
2. Your lead is pretty good but could probably hit the fact that one kid is still in critical condition.
3. Your second paragraph includes a number of sentence fragments.