Colleges Shift
Emphasis on Drinking
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/national/03DRIN.html
October 3, 2000
By KATE ZERNIKE
In recent years, colleges have spent
millions of dollars on scare
tactics aimed at reducing binge
drinking posters showing students
covered with vomit, displays of cars
wrecked by drunken drivers
yet student drinking rates have remained
unchanged.
Now, concluding those campaigns may have actually encouraged heavy
drinking, colleges across the country are
trying a new tactic:
saying students don't drink so much, after
all. To the surprise of
many, the approach has produced marked
declines in the number of
students who say they drink heavily.
The premises of the new strategy are that binge drinking has been
exaggerated and that, by harping on it,
colleges have pushed
students into thinking that heavy drinking
fits the model of the
American college student.
Under the new strategy, though, rather than scare students about
the dangers of drink, the colleges are
introducing campaigns that
cite statistics indicating that, in fact,
most students drink in
moderation.
Proponents admit that the data is limited to a handful of
campuses. But the declines at those
colleges have been enough to
prompt several hundred institutions, from
Dartmouth and Cornell to
the Universities of Washington and
Arizona, to adopt the same
tactic.
The federal department of education is paying for a more
comprehensive study of the effects of the
strategy. And last month,
as colleges prepared for orientation traditionally the heaviest
party season on campus an umbrella group of 21 national
higher‑education associations issued
a statement asking its members
and the news media to ban the phrase
"binge drinking," calling it
inaccurate and counterproductive.
The new campaigns have opened a bitter debate about the difference
between heavy drinking and youthful
experimentation. Those who
first sounded the alarm about binge
drinking dismiss the new
campaigns as Pollyannaish and doubt
statistics saying that students
overestimate the amount they believe their
peers drink. Marketing,
they say, will only gloss over the
problem.
Henry Wechsler, a Harvard researcher, first called attention to
the problem of binge drinking on campus in
1993, when he concluded
that 44 percent of students were binge
drinking. Last month, he
published a study disputing the basis of
the new campaigns and said
that the figure for binge drinkers on
campus still held at 44
percent in 1999.
Richard P. Keeling, the editor of the Journal of American College
Health, which published Dr. Wechsler's
latest study, called the new
strategy "a terribly hopeful approach
in a field which is
despairing of hope. But popularity is not
proof of effectiveness."
Among other public health and college officials, though, the
approach is winning converts.
"It seemed too good to be true," said William DeJong,
director of
the Higher Education Center for Alcohol
and Other Drug Prevention,
a federally financed research center in
Newton, Mass. But success
on a variety of campuses, he said,
"changed the way I've come to
think."
"We have a number of schools that have been trying different
things for a long time and nothing seems
to change that much. Then
they try this approach and wham! Within
two years they see a 20
percent drop in reported drinking. That's
worth paying attention
to."
Devotees call the campaigns "social norms" marketing,
and in the
spirit of Madison Avenue, speak of
moderation as a product, aiming
to sell it to students in much the way The
Gap sold Americans on
wearing khakis: with sly but pervasive
messages suggesting that
everyone else is doing it, too.
"Zero to 3" read Frisbees handed out at Cornell,
referring to the
number of drinks most students drink when
they party. "What's the
norm?" asks one side of footballs at
Hobart and William Smith
Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., with the answer,
"Four or Fewer," on the
other. Posters blanket bulletin boards and
student newspapers at
these and other campuses proclaiming the
facts flatly: 2 of 3
students do not drink on the big party
nights; 55 percent of
students consume fewer than five drinks
when they drink.
The strategy was first suggested in 1986 by H. Wesley Perkins, a
professor of sociology at Hobart, who
noticed in surveys that
students often overestimated how much
their peers were drinking.
The more they overestimated, he said, the
more likely they were to
drink heavily.
In
the years since, several other studies have shown the same gap
between perception and reality. One study
of 48,000 students on 100
campuses nationwide found that at campuses
where most students said
they drank once a month, 90 percent
presumed that their peers drank
weekly or even daily.
At
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, random
Breathalyzer tests given to about 2,000
students in 1997 found that
66 percent had no alcohol in their blood
when they returned to
their dormitory rooms on the traditional
big party nights of
Thursday, Friday and Saturday, despite
what even administrators
acknowledged was a reputation as a
"party school."
The myth of heavy drinking, the researchers say, takes root in
college culture. Fraternities often assume
the highest, or at least
the loudest, profile on campus, even
though in most cases, the
majority of students do not belong to the
Greek system. Campus
chatter, too, revolves around tales of
drunken evenings; as
Professor Perkins asked, how often do
college students sit around
on Saturday morning and say "She was
so sober last night"?
The headlines about binge drinking only reinforced that myth, the
researchers say. Dr. Wechsler defined
binge drinkers as women who
consumed four drinks and men who drank
five over an unspecified
period of time at least once in the
previous two weeks.
"It's like the game of telephone," said Professor
Perkins.
"Students think, `Ooh, 40 percent of
people binge drink,' that
becomes, `Ooh, most people binge drink,'
that becomes, `Ooh,
everybody binge drinks.' By talking about
the problem, we're making
it the norm."
Northern Illinois University was the first to try the strategy. In
1989, the university had tried a
conventional campaign of scare
tactics, inviting speakers to talk about
the risks associated with
alcohol abuse, and bringing a crashed car
on campus. But the
percentage of students who said they drank
heavily actually rose
slightly that year, to 45 percent from 43
percent the previous
year, and students perceived that 69
percent of their peers drank
heavily.
In
1990, the university changed to a social‑norms model, with
posters and advertisements featuring
pictures of attractive couples
under the headline "Most students
drink five or fewer drinks when
they party." Heavy drinking declined
according to surveys of the
students, to 37 percent.
Perceptions of heavy drinking declined, too, to 57 percent in 1990
and have continued to slide, to 33 percent
in 1998.As perceptions
did, heavy drinking did, too, to about 25
percent of all students
in 1998. Negative consequences also
declined: injuries to self
dropped from 29 percent in 1989 to 15
percent, injuries to others,
from 20 percent to 5 percent.
Other campuses adopting the same campaign posted similar results,
prompting still more colleges to sign on.
"These are the best results that anything, short of a 24‑hour
lockdown, is going to produce," said
Drew Hunter, the secretary of
the task force on college drinking that
opposes the term binge
drinking. It includes the American Council
on Education, the
National Collegiate Athletic Association,
and 19 other higher
education associations.
Initially, some college presidents said they worried about the
approach because it seems to endorse
moderate drinking, when most
college students are under the legal
drinking age of 21. But
supporters say the campaign is value‑neutral;
it simply states the
facts.
Researchers on alcohol abuse objected to Dr. Wechsler's use of the
term binge drinking from the start, said
G. Alan Marlatt, director
of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center
at the University of
Washington. In traditional research, he
said, a drinking binge is
an uncontrollable, excessive episode that
lasts several days,
making the drinker unable to function
normally at work or in
relationships.
Others objected to the term because it did not define the period
in which the drinks were consumed, or account
for how much a
student weighed or ate while drinking.
"It created more problems, or at least confusion," said
Timothy C.
Marchell, director of substance abuse
services at Cornell.
To
Dr. Wechsler, though, the semantic disputes divert attention
from the real problem, which is that too
high a percentage of
students
fall under his definition of binge drinking. "Getting
rid of a word is not going to solve the
situation with students
appearing in emergency rooms or the noise
and vomit and date rape
and assaults and injuries," he said.
"You can't define this out of
existence."
Dr. Keeling, the editor of the journal of college health, said the
studies produced on the social‑norms
approach, some appearing in
his publication, only look at single campuses,
so are not
representative of American colleges, and
should not be used to
justify the same approach everywhere.
"We would love to publish the defining study that proves the
value
of this approach," Dr. Keeling said,
"But we just haven't seen it."
For students, campaign has lightened the considerable pressure to
drink, particularly among freshmen.
"Coming in, I was one of those borderline people," said
Angela
Richardson, 20, a junior at Hobart and
William Smith. "I thought,
`I want to socialize, but is everyone
going to look at me if I
don't drink?' This helps you realize you
don't have to stand there
with a drink in your hand."
She and other students on campus initially questioned where the
numbers came from, and some still express
skepticism about them.
Still, even the skeptics say the students
making noise as they come
home drunk from bars are in the minority,
a sign, college
administrators say, that the campaign is
working.
"We're all trying our hardest to be individuals," Ms.
Richardson
said. "But the truth is, we want to
fit in. And just knowing you're
in the majority makes you feel a heck of a
lot better."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company