April 13, 2002

Colleges Offer Shot of Reality
By Linda K. Wertheimer

Robin Barker spent his first night of college at the frat houses. He drank beer, sipped spiked punch stored in trash barrels and sampled hard liquor from fully stocked bars.

"I got pretty sick and ended up puking my guts out all the next day," Mr. Barker said.

Last August, the Southern Methodist University freshman believed he had to get drunk to fit in. Now, the 19-year-old subscribes to a different philosophy and is helping SMU start an advertising campaign to reduce alcohol abuse on campus.

SMU, like a growing number of universities, is trying to convince students that they don't need to drink to excess to be popular. The ads, posted on dorm walls, in student centers and on the sides of buses, cite results from student surveys.

"Did you know?" reads an SMU flier placed around campus this year, "1 in 3 SMU students said they don't drink at all in a typical week."

The Universities of Texas at Austin and at Arlington and Texas Tech University have been running similar campaigns for two to four years. Each university's statistics are different, but the message is similar: The majority of students do not get plastered every time they drink.

"The problem is that so many college students have the idea that everybody's doing everything," said Jo Henderson, the health education coordinator at Texas Tech. "They think everybody's having sex, everybody's getting wasted."

College officials said they aren't naive enough to believe they can eliminate drinking among students. Their goal is to reduce the biggest problem with alcohol on campus - binge drinking that leads to arrests, illness and death. Each year, an estimated 1,400 college students die in alcohol-related incidents, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. About 500,000 are injured annually, the study said.

Since 1993, the percentage of binge drinkers at four-year colleges has remained the same - 44 percent, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. Reverse that statistic, and it means more than half of the students drink responsibly, college officials say.

Student skepticism

The biggest impediment to success in the schools' marketing campaigns is student skepticism.

Some SMU students have already scoffed at the school's advertised statistics, particularly numbers that say some students don't drink at all. They also doubted that the fliers and presentations about the data would have an effect.

"The people who are going to drink are going to drink," said freshman Chris Crum, 19. "I think the majority drink to get drunk."

Ryann Reaud, also a 19-year-old freshman, agreed. "I don't think it's going to make a difference," she said. "If I look at that flier, that doesn't make me want to change my habits in any way."

But Zan Smith, a 20-year-old SMU sophomore, said some students might respond to the campaign's message.

"The people it would affect are the ones that thought they had to drink to fit in," he said. "It would make them feel more comfortable about not drinking."

College officials say they're willing to spread a hard-to-sell message because the efforts have made a difference elsewhere.

Northern Illinois University was one of the first to try advertising campaigns to reduce drinking on campus. It began its advertising blitzes in 1988-89, when 45 percent of students said they were binge drinkers. A decade after it started the program, its percentage of binge drinkers had decreased to 25 percent.

The city's liquor wholesaler reported a 50 percent decline in keg sales, and campus police said they were handling fewer alcohol-related offenses. Other universities report similar results.

The method, known as social norms marketing, has become increasingly popular the last three to five years, said Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center at Northern Illinois University.

In the 1980s, scare tactics were thought to be the most effective, so people preached "Just Say No" to drugs and abstinence for alcohol.

"What the social norms approach is doing is saying, 'Look at how many of them are doing it right,'" Mr. Haines said. "It's feeding back to the students that the norm among students is to drink moderately, if not at all."

In 1999, a study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that 11 percent of colleges had begun using marketing campaigns as another way to combat binge drinking.

Students' disbelief in the campaigns' statistics is natural because "the false norm is the prevailing norm," Mr. Haines said. "On every campus we go to, students think far more people are getting drunk than really are."

SMU hopes that over time its campaign will help shed a label it got from students. The university was ranked No. 19 among the nation's top party schools in The Princeton Review last year, a magazine that uses student surveys.

"Ultimately, if we're successful, SMU will no longer be seen as a party school," said John Sanger, director of the university's Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention. "Perception is everything."

Mr. Barker is now president of a group that sponsors alcohol-free events and promotes healthy choices.

"Contrary to what I thought at the beginning of the school year, you can go to parties and not drink, and students are OK with that," Mr. Barker said.

UTA began their campaign two years ago. Posters and banners all over campus deliver one message: 75 percent of UTA students consume 0-4 drinks when they party.

Message's promoter

Michael Gossie, a psychology professor and counselor in the UTA career and counseling center, is the message's chief promoter. At UTA's health fest earlier this week, as rock music blared in the background, Dr. Gossie and another counselor manned a flier-laden table. Most students reached for handouts on career counseling, but Dr. Gossie made it impossible for them to avoid peach-colored fliers against drinking. He stuck the papers in front of a basket of candy. Every student had to reach over the flier to get a free piece of candy.

"This counters thinking that, 'Well, I have to drink a six-pack to be up to the level of my peers,'" Dr. Gossie said of the fliers' message.

UTA is conducting its campaign as part of a five-year research project run by the Educational Development Center in Newton, Mass.; 32 schools are participating. Half are running the advertising campaigns, and half are not. The center intends to compare rates of drinking on campus before and after the campaigns began.

Olga Azarova, a 20-year-old UTA senior, is helping with the effort. Like Mr. Barker at SMU, she believes in the message.

"The fact is not everyone gets drunk when they party," she said.

But others at UTA said most students, particularly those in their teens, probably would not buy the message.

"Kids will be kids," said Randy Gabel, a 25-year-old junior. "It may make them more aware, but I don't think it's going to make people change. People learn the hard way these days."

Copyright 2002 The Dallas Morning News
The National Social Norms Resource Center
www.socialnorm.org