Washington
College presidents and researchers will present today a new study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that echoes their earlier reports that roughly 40 percent of college students are binge drinkers. The report condemns “the culture of drinking” that pervades college campuses as “antithetical” to higher education. Using a controversial definition for binge drinking, the study lambastes virtually all aspects of student use of alcohol.
According to the study, students are most likely to drink if they are first-year students, males, whites, members of Greek societies, athletes, attending a college in the Northeast, or attending a college with prominent athletic teams. Students are least likely to drink if they attend two-year institutions, religious schools, commuter schools, or historically black colleges and universities.
Included in the report’s list of “research-based” and “particularly appealing” solutions to alcohol-related problems are the scheduling of Saturday classes, a boycotting of sponsorship gifts from the alcohol industry, the replacement of resident assistants with “adults,” and the elimination of keg parties.
The study details a number of consequences of intoxication -- including death, injury, assault, unprotected sex, drunken driving, vandalism, suicide, and academic problems. According to Edward A. Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame and a co-chair of the Task Force on College Drinking, those consequences create an environment “that violates our sense of peace and security and that makes us passive contributors to the degradation of student lives.”
Binge drinking is defined quantitatively rather than qualitatively in the study, correlating it to “five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks for women,” a controversial model used by Henry Weschler, a professor at Harvard University. That definition has come under fire for failing to account for body mass or specific time periods. While the new report notes this criticism, it offers no amelioration other than stating that “the phrase ‘in a row’ implies a relatively short time frame” and that “individuals who consume alcohol at these levels increase their likelihood of experiencing a range of negative consequences.”
“Anytime that definition is used, we fall into misrepresenting the facts,” said Drew Hunter, director of the Bacchus & Gamma Peer Education Network, an association of college-based peer-education programs. “It just lumps students into as large a group as possible into a so-called ‘at-risk’ group -- without any correlation to legal levels of intoxication. It’s a barometer, a snapshot, but it doesn’t tell us anything.”
Another co-chair of the task force, Mark S. Goldman, a professor at the University of South Florida’s Alcohol & Substance Use Research Institute, said, “The reason we’ve always covered [drinking] in fits and starts is because nobody’s ever compiled this much data together, and what this did is a new agenda. For lasting and continuous results, research has to be included. This is a report that covers a lot about the consequences, intervention techniques, and what we already know to be ineffective.”
The report, “A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at U.S. Colleges,” was financed completely with federal dollars. After its official release today, it will be available online at a government Web site (http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov).
Mr. Goldman defended the report against criticism that, by posting its information on a Web site with “drinkingprevention” as part of its name, it is biasing its findings. Drinking, he said, “should not just be a neutral, hands-off kind of thing, but something various groups would want to get involved in.”
Alcohol “does help people socialize, and helps interactions between the sexes,” he added, “but in this particular age group and this particular environment, there are problems. But it’s not to say that there are no benefits at all. There are. We’re not seeing anyone as the enemy.”
The study was conducted by the Boston University School of Public Health, the Harvard University School of Public Health, and the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It cross-referenced data from a number of national databases. Its findings appear in the March issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
Background articles from The Chronicle: