At Conference, College Officials Discuss Ways to Curb High-Risk Drinking on Campuses
Chronicle of Higher Education 2/5/07
Among highlights of the conference was a presentation of project proposals by recipients of grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to study alcohol-abuse-intervention methods. The institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded 15 grants, providing $300,000 a year for three years, for such study. Among the projects described at the conference were the following:
- Researchers at the University of San Diego are seeking to put the millennial generation's highly involved "helicopter parents" to use in preventing alcohol abuse. The university sent parents of incoming freshmen a handbook on college students and alcohol, and asked the parents to discuss it with their children before they enrolled at San Diego. The project will test how effective that approach is in reducing high-risk drinking, which, among college students, usually spikes within the first six weeks of the freshman year.
- Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany will focus on students who already engage in high-risk drinking. The project will compare the effectiveness of peer-led interventions against individual motivational interviewing techniques in reducing alcohol consumption among students who have been referred to the university's judiciary for alcohol-related violations.
During a panel discussion at the conference, three college presidents shared their approaches to reining in excessive drinking on campus.
Robert L. Carothers, president of University of Rhode Island, described a comprehensive plan at his university that, he said, has succeeded in turning around its reputation as a top party school. Under that plan, the institution banned alcohol from all university events -- including homecoming, faculty receptions, and sporting events, and instituted a "three strikes" policy that allowed for parental notification and suspension of students who committed alcohol-related infractions. It also lobbied the state legislature for stricter laws, which would call for revoking the liquor licenses of bars that served alcohol to underage drinkers.
Laurence W. Mazzeno, president emeritus of Alvernia College, in Pennsylvania, spoke of the challenge of dealing with alcohol abuse at small colleges with scant resources. He also said the pervasive "myth" that "if there were a problem, we would know about it because we know all our students personally" was an obstacle in gaining support from trustees and faculty members for drug and alcohol initiatives.
Also on the panel was Jon R. Whitmore, president of Texas Tech University. Mr. Whitmore said his university has sought to raise awareness of alcohol abuse among its 28,000 students by requiring them to complete the two-and-a-half-hour online course, AlcoholEdu.
At the conference's concluding panel, on the future of alcohol-abuse prevention, Gail A. Mattox, a clinical psychiatrist at Morehouse School of Medicine, discussed the mission of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities National Resource Center, which seeks to educate college students about substance abuse and mental-health issues specific to African-Americans.
Data show, for example, that students at historically black colleges and universities are less likely to engage in excessive or binge drinking than are students at other universities. However, the health consequences of alcohol abuse tend to be more severe among African-Americans, said Dr. Mattox, resulting in greater rates of depression and a 10-percent greater risk of death than in the general population.
Those risks, said Dr. Mattox, are compounded by the fact that black students are less likely than their white peers to be insured and have access to health and counseling resources.