College Administrators Hope to Curb Binge Drinking November 9, 2004
News Summary
As the number of alcohol-related deaths continues to grow on college campuses, school administrators are hopeful that education about the dangers of drinking and stricter alcohol policies will prevent such deaths, the Associated Press reported Nov. 8."I don't feel hopeless. I do feel frustrated at times, because the problem does continue," said Thomas Burish, president at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, where two students died in an alcohol-related automobile crash in 2000. "No college president I know of says what he or she is doing is solving the problem."
Most college presidents interviewed recently on the topic believe that policies and campus culture can prevent alcohol-related deaths.
"What a college president can do is affect the atmosphere and climate," said Thomas Hearn, who has been actively involved in alcohol issues during his long tenure as president of Wake Forest University. "We think of it as a cultural, not a local problem. We're not going to solve it by anything we do, but we will have some measurable effect depending on how far we go."
Whether anti-drinking programs work is debatable. For instance, two recent studies showed conflicting results on the effectiveness of the popular strategy called "social norms" marketing. The approach is aimed at convincing students that binge drinking isn't as common as they believe.
While preliminary research from 130 college campuses found the approach promising, another study from Harvard University expert Henry Wechsler showed that the social-norms strategy does little good.
Wechsler said many college presidents recognize the complex problem of college drinking, but he questioned "how committed they are to a long-term, difficult approach" to solving it.
With many college students living off campus, some college officials have begun encouraging students to make and enforce their own rules.
"It's not about telling kids to be more careful and giving them a brochure and CD-ROM," said Alexander Wagenaar, a University of Florida professor of epidemiology and health-policy research. "Changing the environment that fosters it, that's the key."
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