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Colleges Combat Alcohol, Find Drinking Deeply Rooted

Posted on: Sunday, 7 May 2006, 06:06 CDT

By Matt Dees and Jennifer Brevorka, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

May 7--They'd been drinking since the afternoon, the group of college students hanging out under their screened-in porch in Chapel Hill.

They drank wine and beer, helped along by games such as "I Never," in which players confess to a misdeed by taking a sip. It was a Friday -- at least their third night of partying that week -- and it likely wouldn't be their last.

Erin Summers, 19, a sophomore at UNC, said this circle of friends and many others drink on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Being underage isn't an obstacle, Summers said.

"It's like the last four years of your life that it's acceptable," she said, holding a glass of wine.

Her friend, junior Jenny Kline, 21, chimed in, "You might as well live it up."

College and university administrators in the Triangle know many students share this attitude. Heavy drinking and drunken behavior have been part of college life at least since Thomas Jefferson presided over the University of Virginia.

An alcohol-fueled party where Duke University lacrosse players hired two women to dance has again focused public attention on college drinking. One of the women later told police that she was raped by three men in a bathroom; two of the players face charges of rape and kidnapping.

But administrators say they knew long before the lacrosse incident that problem drinking and college often go together like gin and vermouth. Schools have banned alcohol in dorms, introduced hip ad campaigns and rolled out alcohol education classes, all to try to curb underage and abusive drinking.

"We've had concerns for many, many, many years, and we've had a pretty significant and substantial focus on our alcohol culture," said Sue Wasiolek, dean of students at Duke, who has worked in student affairs since 1979. "We've all been in search of the magic bullet. No one to date has really found it."

A report released last week by two Duke faculty groups said too often administrators there have allowed under-age and abusive drinking to go unpunished, both on and off campus. They urged Duke leaders to get serious, get tough and change the culture, echoing clarion calls made in years past at Duke and elsewhere that were ultimately drowned out in a sea of students determined to drink.

Each year, college students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol, more than they spend on textbooks, soft drinks, tea, milk, juice and coffee combined, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alcohol factors into the deaths of 1,400 students a year. About 600,000 students are assaulted each year by peers who have been drinking.

Researchers say that college binge drinking -- the consumption of at least five drinks in a row for men and four for women -- is linked to poor grades, vandalism, and physical and sexual violence. Congress has passed resolutions asking college presidents to address the problem, and the U.S. surgeon general set a goal of reducing college binge drinking 50 percent over the decade ending in 2010.

Some students are getting the message. In the decade ending in 2001, the percentage who abstained from alcohol altogether increased from 16.4 percent to 19.3 percent, according to the Harvard researchers.

But the same researchers found that binge drinking among students remained constant, at roughly 44 percent from 1993 to 2001, the latest year for which data are available.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when the legal drinking age was 18, administrators tended to take a more relaxed approach to alcohol. But after North Carolina raised the legal drinking age to 21 in 1986 and federal legislators required colleges to develop policies to prevent the illegal use of drugs and alcohol on campus, schools cracked down.

"This used to be an issue that was dealt with by a part-time worker in the basement office of a health center," said Henry Wechsler, a Harvard researcher and director of the College Alcohol Study. "Now, it's come up to the presidential level of a college. ... It's become a major issue."

Rules vary widely

Some Triangle schools, such as N.C. Central University in Durham, ban alcohol on campus. Others, such as N.C. State University, limit drinking in dorms but allow alcohol at parties for people of age. Duke, which has toughened its regulations in recent years, allows students of legal age to consume alcohol openly on campus.

At colleges that ban alcohol, 29 percent of students abstain from drinking, compared with 16 percent at schools without bans, according to a 2001 article in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.

Meredith College, a private women's school in Raleigh, prohibits alcohol on campus, and students say the policy deters drinking.

"A lot of people here do so many other things that just don't involve alcohol," said Kristi Glover, a sophomore.

But banishing alcohol from campus doesn't end college drinking. Researchers have found that even at schools with on-campus bans, 38 percent of students are binge drinkers.

At N.C. Central and at Shaw University in Raleigh, the no-tolerance policy on campus is an effective deterrent, but it doesn't stop drinking. Students say if someone wants to drink -- even someone underage -- he or she will find a way, and this often forces partyers to head off campus to bars and dance halls.

"On the weekend, people want to have a good time and drink," Shaw senior Robert Rhodes said.

At N.C. State University and UNC-CH, the rules are more complicated.

In compliance with state law, both schools prohibit anyone under 21 from possessing or consuming alcohol in classrooms, at athletic events and in dorms. Students 21 or older can drink alcohol in certain dorms.

When students move into dorms, residence advisers discuss the campus policy. Before students arrive on campus, many watch an online educational video about drinking. They know the rules and the risks of underage drinking in dorms, including such penalties as performing community service or attending alcohol safety and health classes.

A first offense at UNC-CH requires a visit to an alcohol counselor. Penalties get steeper with each violation and can include expulsion from campus housing.

At N.C. State, penalties for alcohol-related offenses include being placed on probation, writing a reflective paper and performing community service. Students at NCSU say that these measures do not end underage drinking in dorms altogether but that they do tend to send people off campus in search of a drink.

"It just happens regardless of the rules," said William Lambert, a junior who now lives off campus. Living in campus dorms, Lambert said, he would see small groups of people clustered in dorm rooms drinking covertly.

Alcohol is easy to get on both campuses, students say, through older friends or with fake IDs.

Michael S. Simpson, a UNC-CH freshman from Salisbury, drew the attention of a resident adviser when he crammed 21 of his friends into a campus dorm room to celebrate his 19th birthday.

Simpson got busted for underage alcohol possession and had to spend a few hours in an alcohol class. But that hasn't changed his party habits.

"It's abnormal not to drink," he said.

The drinking culture

For many students, the novelty of drinking wears off with age.

As a freshman, Lambert and his friends would don togas and search for cheap beer. Three years later, his tastes have matured. Lambert now favors a good wine and doesn't need a costume to drink.

Duke has one of the most liberal alcohol policies of any Triangle university. As a private school, it isn't subject to state laws restricting alcohol consumption on state-owned property. Duke Dining Services, which provides campus food service, sells kegs of beer, though only to recognized student groups that hire a university-approved bartender.

Students can also belly up to an on-campus bar.

But allowing drinking on campus hasn't confined it there. Neighbors of students living in off-campus housing express growing frustration with noisy parties.

Even on the dry East Campus, where most residents are freshmen, signs of the drinking culture are front and center. Many of the benches outside each dorm, which are sometimes set aflame after major sports victories, are painted with subtle and not-so-subtle references to partying.

"Full of Substance since 1927," reads one. "King of Peers," reads another decorated like a Budweiser label.

Students say binge drinking is part of college life. Chris McGuire, a Duke freshman from Los Angeles, said he doesn't understand why people drink until they get sick, though he's been around them since high school.

"Staying buzzed is so much nicer," said McGuire, sitting on an East Campus bench painted with an arrow and the words "I'm With Sober."

Duke is preparing to launch a study, in concert with a Wake Forest University doctor and several other universities, on ways to discourage the drinking culture. (The university made plans to take part in the study before the lacrosse case.) It will use focus groups to try to find effective ways of convincing students that overdrinking is unhealthy and uncool.

McGuire and many others aren't sure how much good any of it will do.

"I think they're going to want to cut down on the upper 1 percent who get into trouble, but other than that ... " McGuire said, his voice trailing off. "Some people just like getting hammered."

(News researchers Brooke Caine and Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

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Source: The News & Observer

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