From the issue dated Sept. 8, 2000
The Latest War on
'Binge Drinking' Is
Against the Term Itself
By SCOTT STREET
A coalition of 21 higher‑education
associations is
calling on college administrators, government
officials, and researchers to stop using the
term
"binge drinking" in defining student
alcohol use. The
group's statement is the latest salvo in a
simmering
disagreement among
policymakers over whether
too‑liberal definitions of problem
drinking may
actually promote alcohol consumption by causing
students to think binge drinking is the norm.
In its statement this week, the Inter‑Association
Task Force on Alcohol and Other Substance Abuse
Issues said that use of the phrase binge
drinking
should be reserved, as it historically has
been, to
refer to a "prolonged (usually two days or
more)
period of intoxication."
"Students themselves are getting tired of
being
portrayed negatively as a whole for the
behavior of
a few," said Drew Hunter, secretary of the
panel
and executive director of the BACCHUS and
GAMMA Peer Education Network. "What we are
asking for is to define the picture
accurately."
Primarily responsible for the flawed definition
of
binge drinking, in the group's view, is the
College
Alcohol Study sponsored by Harvard University's
School of Public Health. Its latest survey of
student
alcohol use, which was published in March,
found
that 44 percent of students binge, by its
definition:
five or more drinks in one sitting for a man,
and four
for a woman.
This morning, researchers at Harvard released a
follow‑up report showing that students
believe that
35 percent of their peers binge drink, and that
the
students surveyed tend to define a binge as six
drinks for a man and five for a woman. Those
findings are in line with the researchers'
earlier
finding, the report's authors said.
But another national e‑mail survey of
students that
was released this week takes issue with the
Harvard
findings. Sixty‑five percent of
respondents to the
survey, which was
sponsored by the Association of
College Unions International, an association of
student‑activities officials, and
conducted by the
Washington polling company of Penn, Schoen, and
Berland Associates, defined binge drinking as
having
eight or more drinks, and excessive drinking as
having six or more.
When given the chance, many respondents
specifically criticized Harvard's definition of
binge
drinking ‑‑ five for men and four
for women ‑‑ as
too low. "If that is binge drinking, then
95 percent of
my campus binge drinks every week!" wrote
a male
junior at the University of California at Los
Angeles.
Henry Wechsler, who directs the alcohol study
at
Harvard, took issue with the argument that by
setting the bar low, its
study may promote binge
drinking by leading students to think it is the
norm.
He noted that the proportion of students in who
describe themselves as binge drinkers has
remained
steady throughout the 1990's, at about two in
five,
suggesting that definitions haven't had an
effect on
behavior.
But that's not to say drinking on college campuses
isn't still a problem ‑‑ a much
more significant
problem than the debate over academic language.
"It's important that we work together to
solve these
problems," Mr. Hunter said. "There's
no need for a
feeling of competition or challenge."
Mr. Wechsler agreed. "If they can get rid
of it," he
said of problem drinking, "let them call
it whatever
they
want."
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Copyright 2000 by The Chronicle of Higher
Education