Binge Drinking in US colleges - Renamed thread

Parents Forum
81

<p>
[quote]
Perhaps, but to define 5 drinks in one sitting as deviant or dangerous behavior is a bit silly.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The issue here is not risk to the binge drinkers on campus. They make a choice. The bigger issue, and one that prospective students should consider in making their college selections, is the impact of high binge drinking rates on the abstainers and non-binge drinkers. </p>

<p>Here are the results of Wechsler's surveys on the percentage of non-binge drinkers who have experienced the following side effects at Low-Binge and High-Binge schools:</p>

<p>Insulted or humiliated:
Low-binge school 21%
High-binge school 36%</p>

<p>Unwanted sexual advance:
Low-binge school 15%
High-binge school 23%</p>

<p>Serious argument or quarrel:
Low-binge school 14%
High-binge school 23%</p>

<p>Pushed, hit, or assaulted:
Low-binge school 6%
High-binge school 11%</p>

<p>Had property damaged:
Low-binge school 7%
High-binge school 16%</p>

<p>Had studying/sleeping interrupted:
Low-binge school 43%
High-binge school 71%</p>

<p>Been a victim of sexual assault or date rape:
Low-binge school .6%
High-binge school 1%</p>

<p>Experienced at least one of the above problems:
Low-binge school 64%
High-binge school 86%</p>

<p>If the measure of binge drinking is flawed, why are we seeing these differences in secondary effects?</p>

82

<p>You can't even begin to differentiate between "high-binge" and "low-binge" schools when the survey fails to clearly define the word "binge"! That's the point, and until that's fixed, all this data-slinging from Wechsler is meaningless.</p>

83

<p>More to the point, you can't begin to address excessive drinking at our nation's colleges until students, parents, alumni, and administrators stop denying, excusing, and rationalizing the problem.</p>

84

<p>Even more to the point, you can't begin to address excessive drinking at colleges without accurate data with which to assess the nature and extent of the problem. This was a point made by the committee at Williams last year, and Dean Roseman expressed an intention to compile and share data with other NESCAC schools, in order to fill the collective information void. I hope this apparent re-use of old Wechsler survey questions in the Diversity Initiatives wasn't what she had in mind.</p>

85

<p>Driver, I also wish that the study was more specific than the definition of binge drinkers "as male students who had five or more and female students who had four or more drinks in a row at least once in a two-week period." "In a row" conveys to me one right after the other, but a more specific time frame would be much more useful.</p>

<p>Here's what the CDC website says:
"Binge drinking is generally defined as having 5 or more drinks on one occasion, meaning in a row or within a short period of time (Naimi, 2003).... "</p>

<p>Here are some excerpts of what Wechsler wrote about the 5/4 measure:</p>

<p>Binge Drinking: The Five/Four Measure
Abstract </p>

<p>HENRY WECHSLER, PH.D.
S. BRYN AUSTIN, M.S.
Harvard School of Public Health
Boston, Mass.</p>

<p>In December 1994, the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS) published the first of its reports on binge drinking by American college students (Wechsler et al., 1994). Binge drinking was selected as the main measure of alcohol use in this study because of its implications for accompanying risks for health and safety. It was defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more for women at least once during the 2 weeks preceding the survey. A five-drink measure is not new. In their 1969 report on American drinking, Cahalan et al. proposed five or more drinks in a sitting as a meaningful threshold for evaluating the social harm associated with drinking. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future project, which began as a prospective sequential cohort study of the health behavior of high school seniors, has been using the five-drink measure since 1975 (Johnston et al., 1996). In fact, more than a decade ago, in an article on the Monitoring the Future data, O'Malley et al. (1984) tentatively referred to this level of consumption as "binge" drinking. The gender distinction was added by the CAS to take into account differences in the proportions of men and women experiencing alcohol-related problems at various drinking levels. The five/four drink measure may reflect gender differences in rates of alcohol metabolism....</p>

<p>Concurrent with increased use of this concept of binge drinking, some objections have been voiced regarding the definition of this measure.... In DSM-IV, the term has applications beyond alcohol abuse (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In the classification of eating disorders, episodes of excessive eating, which typically last less than 2 hours, are labeled binges. Dictionaries generally define binge as a "drunken celebration" or "excessive indulgence," synonymous with "orgy" and "splurge," with no duration prerequisite.</p>

<p>Semantics aside, the more fundamental concern should be whether the five/four-drink benchmark truly represents a threshold for alcohol-related social consequences. Working with data from a sample of over 20,000 current drinkers in the United States, Midanik et al. (1996) found that the risk of driving after drinking, alcohol-related employment problems and ICD-10 alcohol dependence was significantly higher for people who reported consuming five or more drinks in a row at least once in the previous year compared to people who did not report having five or more drinks in a row. The risk of driving after drinking, alcohol-related job problems and ICD-10 alcohol dependence rose most sharply for those persons who reported having five or more drinks in a row at the lower end of the frequency range from once in the previous year to about once per week and then leveled off for those consuming five or more drinks in a row any more frequently....</p>

<p>From another perspective, a letter to the editor published in 1995 in the Journal of the American Medical Association in response to the Wechsler et al. (1994) article stated that the use of the five/four measure "problematized" drinking behavior that is common on college campuses. "There is little gained," the authors wrote, "(and perhaps more lost) with college students when normative behavior (44%) is labeled, viewed, or treated as pathological or when the phenomenon of college student drinking is compared with alcohol-dependent persons who binge involuntarily" (Dimeff et al., 1995). These comments ignore our important finding that, though it may be normative at many colleges, binge drinking has a significant negative impact on health and safety on America's campuses. We found the five/four measure of binge drinking to be significantly associated with greatly increased risk of alcohol-related social consequences (Wechsler et al., 1994). Students who binge drank one to two times (infrequent binge drinkers) or more than two times (frequent binge drinkers) in the last year had five times and ten times greater odds, respectively, of driving after drinking when compared to students who consumed alcohol in the past year but did not binge drink (nonbinge drinkers). Infrequent and frequent binge drinkers had five times and 25 times greater odds, respectively, of experiencing five or more different alcohol-related problems since the start of the academic year when compared to nonbinge drinkers. Nearly half (47%) of frequent binge drinkers experienced five or more alcohol-related problems, whereas only 3% of nonbinge drinkers did. In fact, 92% of the students who reported five or more alcohol-related problems in the previous year were identified by the five/four measure as binge drinkers.</p>

<p>Another objection to the five/four drink measure is that, because it is sufficiently low to include 44% of students, it will have the unintended effect of validating those who are inclined to drink heavily. Students will be led to think the argument goes that "Everybody else is doing it, so it must be OK." The flaw in this argument is that students already believe binge drinking is normative. Administrators conducting a survey of their students at a private northeastern university found that most do not view consuming up to nine drinks in a row to be problematic and that it is only when a person reaches for the tenth that he or she can be viewed as abnormal or deviant.</p>

<p>Making believe there is not much binge drinking at colleges by defining it out of existence will not make it go away. Recognizing that it is there and confronting it is the appropriate action. Let us not practice the same form of denial we attribute to people with alcohol problems."</p>

<p>Pretty convincing to me.</p>

86

<p>
[quote]
You can't even begin to differentiate between "high-binge" and "low-binge" schools when the survey fails to clearly define the word "binge"!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The student surveys that Wechsler (and Williams and Dartmouth) employ never use the word "binge". These surveys ask on how many occasions, in the previous two weeks, has the student consumed five or more drinks in a row. It's a very straightforward question.</p>

<p>Students who respond "No times" are characterized as non-binge drinkers. Students who respond "1 time" or "2 times" are categorized as infrequent binge drinkers. Students who respond "3 times", "4 times", "5 times", "6 times", "7 times", "8 times", or "9+ times" are categorized as frequent binge drinkers.</p>

<p>You can set the threshold whereever you like and it doesn't change anything. If you raise the threshold, then the absolute percentage of binge drinkers decreases, across the board at all schools. But, the relative differences between a low-binge, a medium binge, and a high binge school remain the same.</p>

<p>Heck, use ambulance transports if you like. I found one article that discussed alcohol at the three Tri-Co schools in Philadelphia. In the Fall Semester of 1996, Haverford had ten students admitted to the campus health center for alcohol poisoning, seven of whom were transported to the hospital, at least one near death (.4 BAC, requiring several days of hospitalization). Swarthmore had two students at their health center for intoxication, neither of whom needed to be transported to the hospital. Bryn Mawr's health center also saw two students; the article did not specify whether either was transported to the hospital. That's pretty clear evidence of different degrees of alcohol problems. It's almost certain that you would find significant differences in the binge drinking rates, no matter what threshold you choose to use. BTW, Haverford's Dean was quoted along the same lines used by Williams adminstrators last year. "It feels like I'm just waiting for someone to die."</p>

87

<p>The data quoted in this thread are from two different reports. </p>

<p>The report referenced in the title of this thread is the Williams College Diversity Initiatives Self Study April 2005. This is a lengthy -- 200 pages -- study of how people of diverse cultures and races get on at Williams covering many aspects of campus social and academic life. </p>

<p>As far as I can tell, there is only one mention of drinking in the text of this report. It says on page 16 "African Americans and Asian Americans report drinking very considerably less than do others."</p>

<p>Chart #23 shows that of the students surveyed 27% of all African Americans, 53% of all Latinos, 39% of all Asian, and 58% of all Whites "Had five or more drinks on one or more occasions in [the] last two weeks." About 1000 students responded.</p>

<p>The term BINGE DRINKING is not used in this report. As far as I can tell, the phrases "in one sitting" "in a row" and "drinking to get drunk" are not used in this report. </p>

<p>The figure that I asked for (over and over and over per Interesteddad) in the separate thread titled "Avoiding Party Schools" was a different figure and a different study. In this thread Mini stated: "As ID pointed out, the percentage of students who binge drink is a central characteristic of campus culture, even when the majority don't. The "feel" of a school where the percentage is, say 30% (Swarthmore) will be quite different from one where it is around 45% (Williams? Amherst)"</p>

<p>Because I had seen the 45% figure in reference to Williams before and didn't know where it came from (and because Mini included the ? in his comment) I asked about its origin. I wanted to see the source myself so that I could better understand the context, e.g., the date, the sampling, the definition, the questions.</p>

<p>The answer I received was that the figure came from Weschler's Harvard School of Public Health survey data. Mini explained "It is a documented fact, but because of agreements with Wechsler, only the school can provide you with the documentation." Thus a report that few people have seen or even have access to has become the basis of determining the ambient culture at Williams!</p>

<p>"Binge" is an extremely emotive and negative word. It connotes chronic, uncontrollable and nasty behavior. </p>

<p>No one is arguing that "five drinks in a row" meaning 5 shots lined up on the bar and chugged one after another is unacceptable and dangerous behavior; however, the Williams College Diversity Initiatives Self Study does NOT imply this scenario. </p>

<p>The question that Williams asked specified five drinks on one or more occasion in a two week period. An affirmative answer would include a person who had five drinks during the course of an evening stretching from late afternoon to early morning. Some people would find this objectionable. Some would not. My point is that calling it "binge drinking" and is misleading and emotionally manipulative. Then to project binge drinking corollaries -- like "drinking to get drunk" and other abusive and anti-social behavior -- onto to over half the student population is compounding the felony. </p>

<p>Many of my son's friends are light drinkers and non-drinkers. Many of those that conceivably may have answered yes to the Diversity Initiatives question should not be classified as binge drinkers in everyday parlance, no matter how Wechsler defines it. They do not drink to the point of passing out, throwing up, getting in fights or in any way acting like Neanderthals. They are college kids having a few drinks (yes even 5!) over the course of a party night.</p>

<p>I am not a drinker, but many of my friends and family indulge. When I have dinner parties that last 4-5 hours it's not at all uncommon for my guests to consume 5 or more drinks and still leave my house non-inebriated. (Don't worry, they're not driving!) I certainly wouldn't classify these people as binge drinkers. </p>

<p>I went to a Big Ten school in the 60's when substance abuse -- both alcohol and drugs -- was rampant. I know what dangerous substance abuse is. I acted irresponsibly as did many of my friends. There were disastrous consequences. I don't remember that period fondly and I don't glamorize it. I certainly wouldn't want my son in a similar, dangerous environment. I am convinced that Williams is NOT a similar, dangerous environment.</p>

<p>Statistics are just numbers and can be interpreted or misinterpreted in many ways. The Weschler Report and now this Williams Survey (reinforced here by hearsay and third hand accounts) have led the Williams administration to conclude that more alcohol education is a good idea. We all think it is a good idea. This is very different from stating as fact that 53% of all Williams students are binge drinkers and then defining binge drinking as tossing down 5 drinks one after another. This is a distortion.</p>

<p>I stand by my assertion gathered from intimately knowing current and recent Williams kids that abusive and dangerous drinking is NOT common on campus, NOT socially tolerated by the majority of the student body and that the quality of life is NOT adversely affected by the small majority who do indulge in substance abuse. </p>

<p>Bad things happen at good schools. Williams kids are not angels; I don't doubt that some kids have been guilty of some bad actions. There are many reasons not to choose Williams. However, if you cross Williams off your list because you fear a culture of abusive drinking, you are misinformed.</p>

88

<p>To follow up on wish<em>it</em>was_april, here's a SUNY prof asking many of the same questions momrath is:
<a href="http://www.alcoholfacts.org/Wechsler.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.alcoholfacts.org/Wechsler.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As the prof states, the most recent approach to alcohol abuse prevention is Social Norms marketing, which focuses on countering the myth that most college students go around drunk all the time, rather than demonizing them: <a href="http://www.virginia.edu/studenthealth/hp/norms/ThroughStudentEyes.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.virginia.edu/studenthealth/hp/norms/ThroughStudentEyes.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

89

<p>Wow. My eyebrows, after reading that first piece, are still frozen at maximum arch. One of the more devastating scholarly takedowns I've ever seen. On the subject of "social norms marketing"--I wasn't familiar with the term, but it seems to me that the most dramatic example of its effective use would have to be the long campaign against cigarette smoking, where public opinion was practically reversed. I have seen numerous examples of this used in an anti-drinking context on campus, but didn't know what it was called, or even that it represented a school of thought. Thanks for posting those articles (is it possible for you to post the second page of the student-written article? I could only read up to "continued on page 5."</p>

90

<p>Alas, I can't find the rest of the article. However, here is a whole website devoted to the social norms approach: <a href="http://www.socialnormslink.com/snorms.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.socialnormslink.com/snorms.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

91

<p>Before I begin, let me state that I am not in favor of college drinking. In fact, I rarely drink at all anymore.</p>

<p>However, in reading this thread I wonder how I and my 9 closest friends in college (all fraternity brothers) made it through college in the 70s.</p>

<p>Did we study hard? Yes, 4 lawyers, 3 doctors, 1 architect, 1 landscape architect, 1 rocket scientist (none of us know what he does, its classified) and 1 oil and gas executive, all but 1 with graduate degrees.</p>

<p>Did we drink? Yes, practically every night, usually upon returning from the libraries at about 11:00 p.m. Then it was the news, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder followed by whatever, although usually all we did was talk and play cards or backgammon.</p>

<p>Did we drink to excess? Surely.</p>

<p>I do wonder when and why did this become such a big problem. Is it the drinking and driving? We rarely drove anywhere. We usually gathered in one room.
Is it the general disdain in society towards drinking, which was not as prevalent in the 70s? What happened?</p>

92

<p>I think it's a problem because students under 21 are living in the Prohibition era. If they could go out to a bar legally, there would be more accountability. In truth I have never been drunk. (Many of us ACOAs are like that.) However, in college I just loved going to the college bar and having a beer with my friends, and I especially loved going to the wine and cheese parties offered by the various academic departments, thought these were just so sophisticated! There is a reason many university presidents have come out against the 21 drinking age. The most recent one I heard was the president of Princeton, who is not exactly a friend to party animals. This is a time of life when young people could be learning to drink in moderation. Instead, we infantilize them and then wonder why they act so irresponsibly.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
What happened?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What happened to catch the attention of administrators at many colleges was the increasing number of students they were transporting to hospital emergency rooms with near-fatal alcohol poisoning.</p>

<p>For example, this was one of two key indicators of a drinking problem at Williams and it reached the point where the medical practice serving the student health center refused to accept the liability risk, forcing the health center to close in the evening. The same trigger forced the issue at Haverford, where 7 students sent by ambulance to the hospital in a single semester (out of a student body of only 1100) raised some eyebrows.</p>

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<p>I wonder about the effects of the "Prohibition" era stuff. I'm not convinced the drinking age has much to do with it - after all, there are plenty of binge drinkers under age 18. Nothing today prohibits students from drinking moderately if they choose, or colleges from training residential or junior advisors about the differences between moderate and binge drinking, and giving them the power to do something about it. Indeed, as ID points out, this is the case for the majority of drinkers at Swarthmore, and at Earlham, and at the women's colleges, and scores of other places. (Granted, also, that abstinence seems to be a more acceptable option at these places, but not overwhelmingly so.) The cultural difference comes when, in some instances (as noted), five out seven folks who drink at all, binge drink or (if you don't like the term), say they "drink to get drunk", and did so at least once in the past two weeks (many did more). Culturally, moderate drinkers are left in limbo land. Why is it that Hobart and William Smith colleges can report a 21% decline in binge drinking, based on actual efforts they have undertaken <a href="http://silvergategroup.com/publications/articleWrapper.jsp?article_id=23&issue_id=10%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://silvergategroup.com/publications/articleWrapper.jsp?article_id=23&issue_id=10&lt;/a>, but the Prez of Princeton says the problem is the drinking age? Seems to me to be a way to refuse to tackle the problems at one's own institution.</p>

<p>Why do I care? Well, if the finest institutions in the country (yes, Williams, and Amherst, and Dartmouth, among others, definitely are among them) raise a generation of leaders who believe binge drinking (and its related attributes) are socially acceptable, what will that mean for future trends in our society? And, closer to home, if institutions with such vast resources and brainpower can't think clearly about how to go about changing cultures in their own hothouses, doesn't this cast doubt about the quality of academic life they are offering their students in thinking about how qualititative change happens in the world? Mind you that's a question, and not a rhetorical one, and not one to which I have an answer.</p>

<p>Finally, I want to feel proud of my alma mater. I don't want to see students (other people's children - for Heaven's Sake!) get hurt. I don't want to have to make excuses for it when my children go to visit (or when anyone else's children go to visit, and tell me what they have seen.) And I would feel the same, regardless of the name of the college attached to it.</p>

95

<p>"Police address rising trends in sexual assaults"</p>

<p><a href="http://badgerherald.com/news/2005/04/29/police_address_risin.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://badgerherald.com/news/2005/04/29/police_address_risin.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>From the story:</p>

<p>
[quote]
The vast majority of the crime in sector 403[which includes a portion of the University and the State Street bars] is related to alcohol,” Schauf said. “Crime in that area spikes at midnight and at bartime, particularly on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights".

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
alcohol was involved on one side or the other in 80 percent of sexual assault crimes since 1995.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
59 percent of sexual assault victims were under the influence of alcohol. She [a police officer]added that in 63 percent of sexual assaults, the victim was either an acquaintance of or had a relationship with the assailant.

[/quote]
</p>

96

<p>"Nothing today prohibits students from drinking moderately if they choose" Mini, if I want to sit down in a restaurant and have a glass of wine with my meal, or buy a bottle of wine in a liquor store, I can do so legally. A college student today cannot do so without a fake ID. Otherwise he or she needs to join a scene that involves binge drinkers. We have turned the first glass of wine into a gateway drug.</p>

<p>Speaking of drugs, I find it silly to be talking about alcohol in isolation. My kids were pretty clear when they were looking at colleges that on any campus, depending on the culture, the drug of choice is going to be either alcohol or weed. You can't look at statistics re the one without looking at those re the other, because they are inversely related. Unless you are looking at Bob Jones University.</p>

<p>Oh, and you made a big leap in your statement re the president of Princeton, which has a massive, and I mean massive, anti-alcohol initiative (which is a challenge because much of the drinking occurs off University property, in the eating clubs; for the record, it's Yale where kegs are open in the quads). Disagreeing with the current drinking age does not necessarily mean "to refuse to tackle the problems at one's own institution."</p>

97

<p>I think that the same correlation between heavy drinking and sexual assaults was found at Harvard. One problem that was encountered in disciplining students accused of rape (often date rape) was that the victim's memory was rendered fuzzy by alcohol.
So the university, starting from a concern with sexual violence, decided to focus as well on excessive drinking.</p>

98

<p>Mini,
your continued reverence for the clearly flawed Wechsler surveys makes it hard to take your positions seriously...although I, and I think all other parents, share your concern about the potential dangers posed by alchohol in the college setting. As long as you carelessly sling the misdefined "binge" word--and the amorphous "drinking-to-get-drunk" meme, a la Wechsler-- none of the correlative data make any sense. Further, you cite apparently successful intervention at Hobart; however, according to the link, they used Social Norms marketing to achieve their goals, which Wechsler specifically disparages, both in his own reports, and as noted in the SUNY rebuttal provided by aparent5. Did you read that?</p>

<p>As for prohibition, I agree that it's a part of the problem, maybe a big one. When alchohol is contraband, and its purchase, possession, and use must be clandestine, there is less opportunity to learn to use it in a social context, and more liklihood that there well be secretive "pre-gaming," which I think does lead to trouble.</p>

99

<p>"Nothing today prohibits students from drinking moderately if they choose" Mini, if I want to sit down in a restaurant and have a glass of wine with my meal, or buy a bottle of wine in a liquor store, I can do so legally. A college student today cannot do so without a fake ID. Otherwise he or she needs to join a scene that involves binge drinkers. We have turned the first glass of wine into a gateway drug."</p>

<p>First of all, apologies about the Prez of Princeton. I know nothing about her initiative (I've heard she is a terrific person), and was only going by what was cited. (But she can tackle the eating clubs if she chooses. Other places have, with frats, including those off university property. Courts have ruled in our state that if the colleges have a reasonable expectation -- and plan -- that students enrolling are going to be living in frat houses "attached" to the institution, the college is still liable, even if they don't own the houses.)</p>

<p>Secondly, underage college students at prestige institutions can and do bring wine into the dining rooms/eating halls all the time. (or at least they used to.) They have wine-and-cheese parties sponsored by their houses (not by the college); and some colleges (isn't Swarthmore one?) actually buy kegs of beer for campus parties. When I was back east in October, I took my then 16-year old (now 17-year-old) first-year into the local wine shop to buy (and help her to select) a good bottle of wine for her birthday. </p>

<p>Also true that alcohol doesn't happen in isolation. Geographically, there's more weed on the west coast, and less alcohol. But while there may be a trade off between weed and alcohol use, the data don't show a similar trade off between weed and binge drinking (if anything, some of the data I have, for Washingotn State, suggests you often find both together.)</p>

<p>Re: Hobart and William Smith: They actually did a lot more than "social norms" marketing. From the research I've read (TONS of it), "social norms" marketing rarely works by itself. However, in the case where it was pioneered (Western Washington University), it is combined with police "green bus" sweeps of public underage drinkers in the first three weeks of school, and a 2-strikes policy. It has been hugely effective, we believe, because the "social norms" marketing reinforces what else has also become known (since the third week of school) about school/community collaboration to enforce those norms.</p>

100

<p>
[quote]
You can't look at statistics re the one without looking at those re the other, because they are inversely related.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I have run across absolutely no research that indicates marijuana use and drinking are inversely related in today's college scene.</p>

<p>Just the opposite, actually. In looking at the federal OPE campus crime reporting for a few comparable schools, those with higher rates of alcohol arrests and infractions also had higher rates of drug violations.</p>

<p>Kind of too bad, really. In some ways, it would be nice to choose a "pot" campus over a "drinking" campus since a heavy alcohol culture tends to be much more disruptive of overall campus life. But, I just don't see evidence of a choice.</p>