Binge Drinking in US colleges - Renamed thread

Parents Forum
1

<p>Momrath (and others interested) -</p>

<p>Yesterday (April 21), as part of their self-study on Diversity Initiatives, Williams released data from its 2003 Enrolled Student Survey on binge drinking. The question they asked was stiffer than that posed by Wechsler, to wit, 'have you had 5 or more drinks at one sitting anytime in the previous two weeks?' (Wechsler, as I remember, asks for the previous 30 days - could be wrong though - I'll look it up)</p>

<p>The result:
58% of white students
53% of Latino students
39% of Asian students
27% of African-American students</p>

<p>reported binge drinking (a MINIMUM of 5 drinks at one sitting - obviously, for a substantial number it will be more than once, and more than 5 drinks) within the past two weeks. This is self-reported data (usually a slight underestimate). To me, the striking part of this data is (as found at Carleton) that the majority of students who drink at all are NOT moderate drinkers.</p>

<p>A side note of interest: by a margin of 49% to 33%, white students are significantly more likely to participate in athletics than African-American ones. This should give the lie to the idea that the African-American students are being recruited for the purposes of playing sports. And, yes, the binge drinking data by race closely parallels the athletic data. (The income data is difficult to read in the report, but it is clear that a far higher percentage of whites, and a lower percentage of African-Americans, fall into the higher income quintiles.)</p>

<p>I congratulate them on the courage to release the data.</p>

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<p>Mini, do you have any data from comparable schools?
It looks like Williams has a problem to me, or is this the norm now? How many students particpated in the study?</p>

3

<p>I have data, but I can only release reports from public sources (as I did with Carleton, and the data above). N= 1,061 students (796 white; 117 Asian; 75 Latino, 73 African-America), or well over 55% of total enrollment. </p>

<p>This data is from Williams' own survey, so it may or may not comparable. Compared with schools in Wechsler's work, it would seem to be well above the norm, which is not totally surprising, as Williams has all the documented characteristics of a school prone to heavy drinking, except a Greek presence.</p>

<p>A clarification: when I said "athletics", I should have said "varsity sports".</p>

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<p>Mini: what do you think Williams should do to address this?</p>

5

<p>It's a fair question, and I don't think there are any easy answers. Certainly they have wise people at Williams trying to figure this out. Things I would consider:</p>

<p>-- An end to the freshman ghetto. Other than JAs, students are not around many role models for their futures on a regular basis. Schools without first-year living isolation generally have lower rates of alcohol-related emergencies (which, of course, is the big problem.)</p>

<p>-- The social/housing system clearly needs overhauling, and the administration is working to address that now.</p>

<p>-- The athletic thing is tough, but 380 or so male athletes in a student body of 900 males makes for one of the most athletic campuses in the country. One professor has gone so far as to call it "a NIKE camp, with a few courses on the side as a diversion." I think that's probably an overstatement, but when a college wins the SEARS trophy (best athletic school in Division III 6 out of 7 years), it is clear where they have put their priorities. Prez Morty is not happy about that, and I think there will be some changes.</p>

<p>-- Several colleges (Western Washington U. is a good example) actively invites in the outside police toward the beginning of every school year to enforce underage drinking laws. (It puts the fear of ... into them.) Pomona has instituted a $100 fine for possession hard liquor in their fresh/soph housing section. I'm not tremendously fond of this latter idea, but it is better than JAs being held criminally liable for serious injuries or deaths to their charges from drinking (and, as Dean Roseman points out, one death on campus and there will be NO more drinking - it just happened at Kenyon, very similar demographically to Williams, and I think Williams is a time-bomb waiitng to happen.) Hate to go there.</p>

<p>-- More socio-economic diversity would help.</p>

<p>-- IF they did away with the freshman ghettos, they could turn JAs into Residential Advisors, paid by the college, who are charged with carrying out the college's alcohol policies. </p>

<p>-- Finally, and I really can't answer this one. Where do the students, so many of whom are so heavily involved in athletics, and theatre, and music, and dance (there are so many wonderful things at Williams!) find the time to drink so much and so often? Is the workload that easy? Or is it so tough that this is the only way they can relieve stress? (That, by the way, was true for me: I was an honor student at Williams, and a regular drug user.) Or is it, as Interesteddad has suggested, that students are being selected who already have a predisposition toward binge drinking (factors already stated)? I don't know the answer.</p>

<p>Let's be clear: the numbers at Williams are high in both absolute and relative terms, but they are equally high or higher at some (but by no means all) other places as well. As an alum, what hurts is that Williams, unlike many of those other places, probably has both the small campus size, the relative isolation, and the resources to tackle it, and it hasn't happened as of yet. But I'm hopeful.</p>

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<p>For the past 6 years I have worked part-time for two state universities in their student health departments. Neither university has a significant number of Hispanic students. Unfortunately the amount of binge drinking is phenomenal! The segments of students who DON'T show up in student health after a weekend of binge drinking are: Mormon students, African-American students, and female Asian students. I assume the Mormon students don’t drink alcohol period and the others probably drink but don’t binge.</p>

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<p>As I recall.... and it is all a bit fuzzy.... the objective of underaged drinkers is to get smashed. So it does not surprise me at all that drinkers drink heavily.</p>

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<p>Here's link to Dr. Wechsler's (Harvard School of Public Health) most recent survey of binge drinking at a representative sample of 100+ colleges and universities. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/trends/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/trends/&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Part II of CC's Old Williams discussion
<a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/83571.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/83571.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Part II of Frat drinking
<a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/90707.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/90707.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Older link
<a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/31070.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/31070.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>xiggi, are you going to be a professor someday? Work in a field that involves research?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
As an alum, what hurts is that Williams, unlike many of those other places, probably has both the small campus size, the relative isolation, and the resources to tackle it, and it hasn't happened as of yet.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>As an alum, what bothers me is that my alma mater now appears to have the same binge-drinking rate as FSU, one of the most notorious party schools in the country.</p>

<p>My challenge to the Williams community: I think you can do better.</p>

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<p>Dstark, before that happens, I need to continue my apprenticeship and learn from the many true research masters who visit CC with regularity. With search engines and a bit of memory, finding the data has become trivial. I am still finding out that the same cannot be said about interpreting it correctly, let alone understanding it. :)</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>Wechsler defines binge drinking as within the prior two weeks, so that is the same. His "bar" is set a little lower for half the campus, however. He uses a 5 drink threshold for men, but a 4 drink threshold for women. The Williams report appears to use a single 5 drink threshold, so the numbers would be lower than in a Wechsler survey.</p>

<p>BTW, assuming that each racial group in the survey is a representative sample of that racial group campus wide, I ran the numbers based on the ethnic distribution at the time of the survey (no data for the 5.8% Intls and Native Americans).</p>

<p>If you assume the INTLs do not binge at all, the overall rate would be 50%. If you assume the INTLs binge at the same rate as the rest of the campus, the number would be 53%. These numbers would probably increase if you used Wechsler's 4-drink threshold for women.</p>

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<p>I'm skeptical of the importance of freshmen ghettoes to binge drinking. For example, based on the noises made in both the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Daily News around the time of The Game (how's that for arrogance?) and reports of Yale's superior (i.e. more alcohol-fueled) social scene, alcohol would seem to be a more important component of Yale's social scene than of Harvard's despite the fact that Yale has the 4-year residential college, and Harvard's freshmen are housed together. But according to reports, the New Haven police--as well as the college authorities--are more tolerant of underage drinking than their Cambridge, and especially Boston counterparts.</p>

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<p>Students on these boards have said that kegs are set up in the residential college quads, so I guess that's a confounding variable. I thought that Yale first-years, though grouped according to their residential college affiliation, lived together in one big area (with a couple of exceptions)?</p>

<p>The president of Princeton recently stated publicly that she is against the current drinking age. I believe a number of college presidents have said the same. In my book it creates a situation in which the universities can't do anything to encourage moderate drinking but instead come across as Carrie Nation.</p>

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<p>ID - I ran the numbers, and came up with similar results. The even scarier part of the 58% number among white students (and let's be honest: at any of these campuses, white students set the tone for the place), is that, given what we know from Wechsler's work, it probably approaches 70-75% among white freshman (male and female). (No wonder why, when my d. asked what you could do if you didn't want to live around folks who regularly got drunk, the first-year students she asked basically stared at her.)</p>

<p>There was some economic distribution numbers for the campus, too. 45% receive financial aid (40% grants). 10% of students from bottom two quintiles in the country, 70% from the top quintile. Which means only 20% of students come from the broad middle/upper middle class (which is also likely where the bulk of the applicants come from.) Numbers are basically the same as Yale's. If it feels like it lacks in socio-economic diversity, it is because it does. And if it seems hard for middle class students to get in, it is because it is, on account of the affirmative action for the wealthier ones. The interesing thing, though, is that (to try to answer another question I was asked), they ran the diversity data historically by racial category, but not by socio-economic standing. I still maintain that it is slightly lower than 30 years ago (based on financial aid data), but I have no way of breaking it out. Nice to see Questbridge there now - 21 students accepted ED this year.</p>

<p>I don't think the legal drinking age has anything to do with it one way or the other - given that colleges don't honor them anyway. Nor do I think the issue is long-term alcoholism (I've got some interesting studies on what happens to fraternity drinkers 10 years later - and they turn out like everyone else!) The issue is unsafe student behavior, unsafe campus environments, and damage to community life.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Mini, do you have any data from comparable schools?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Here are few data points. The national average for binge drinking is 44%. Penn State is the highest I've seen, above 70%. Florida State is 55%.</p>

<p>Among LAC's, Carleton is as high as 45% (they report a range and it's not clear where the range came from). Earlham is 30%. Grinnell is 33%. Swarthmore is supposedly in that same range.</p>

<p>I believe that Wechsler had initially reported the average for women's colleges at around 25% in his early surveys, but I think that has crept up towards the 30% range.</p>

<p>Those numbers for Williams are high. It's not a huge surprise, given the reporting on the drinking problems at the school. I doubt that they are the highest in the country for an elite LAC. With 80% fraternity membership, a very wealthy student body, and no diversity, I reckon that Washington & Lee would be a candidate for that honor.</p>

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<p>Why is the rate of binge drinking so low in the Af-Am population? I know a number of Af-Am adults, and they are drinkers and teetotallers at about the same rate as my adult white acquaintances. Given that I'm here in the Bible Belt, I don't think it is cultural rejection of drinking.
Is it the lack of organized frats? That wouldn't apply at Williams, there are no frats for anyone. I wonder what the binge drinking rates are at HBCUs, there is definitely a strong frat tradition at most of those schools? Are the Af-Am parents doing something right that we aren't?</p>

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<p>In our state, African-Americans at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty line have a 25% lower need for alcohol/drug treatment than whites, and remains lower (though less so) among wealthier ones. (This is for both alcohol and other drugs.)</p>

19

<p>Cangel,
One thought I had about the differences, and I wish this wasn't true, is that many kids still segregate socially, as do adults. So a campus dominated by parties, and with an average AA population of 5-10%, well it may be that the students in the minority numbers aren't always invited to the frat houses, etc.</p>

<p>At some of these top schools mentioned, minority students feel they still need to work harder to be considered "as good"...and a stronger focus not to "mess up" by getting into trouble drinking is worth considering. There was an article I read about Howard U. --comparing how kids drank, and the preference was not for beer but for hard liquor. Given its nature and cost hard liquor isn't something you'd find in a keg with a hose. Or am I clueless?.</p>

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<p>Cangel:</p>

<p>If you look at the numbers behind these binge drinking rates, the sheer quantity of alcohol being consumed is staggering. For example, assuming national averages applied to Williams binge drinking rate, you can assume that 30% of the Williams students binge drink more than one a week. Probably 25% drank 10 or more times in the last 30 days. Since the average student who drinks binge drinks, we aren't talking about buying a beer. We're talking a six-pack, minimum. That gets expensive. </p>

<p>I don't think that it's a coincidence that the most "preppie" schools (white, wealthy, etc) are often the schools with the heaviest drinking rates. Likewise, if you go to a state university, it will probably be the wealthier, whiter kids anchoring the drinking culture (i.e. the frats). Culturally, it could just boil down to being spoiled rotten.</p>