drinking at LACs, how to think about this

Parents Forum
21

<p>I was thinking about arizonamom's statement:

[quote]
Drinking is very prevalent at the secluded colleges where there is not much going on around the community and life is mainly on campus.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I wonder if that is statistically proven? </p>

<p>Mini - do you know? </p>

<p>I mean, I'm picturing the drinking at the really big (football) schools like Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State - and I'm thinking there has to be a ton of drinking on those campuses too.</p>

<p>Boy this site is slow today!!!</p>

22

<p>Wait a minute! At my D's high school, the jocks, if caught drinking, are off the team (and all sports) for 120 days! So, the "dumb jocks" are the some of the least likely students to drink. The messages to the athletes is a sound one: Take good care of your body if you want maximum performance, and follow the rules or you're out!</p>

23

<p>Baseballmom:</p>

<p>I think you'll find wide variation from college to college and team to team on that issue.</p>

<p>Often, college athletic programs operate to some degree as independent from the rest of the college. For example, my alma mater has one set of written regulations for pre-frosh visits arranged through the admissions office and a different set of written regulations for pre-frosh recruiting visits arranged through, and hosted by, the athletic teams. That kind of indepence is common and, in fact, the admissions process for a recruited athlete is often a completely separate track.</p>

<p>There are many sports, male and female, that don't have elevated drinking rates or lower academic standards. There are other sports that have an atypical culture relative to the wider standards and culture of a school.</p>

<p>IMO, many schools don't hold the Athletic Directors as accountable as they should. If I were President of my alma mater, after releasing last week's alcohol survey and report that showed the athletes as being such a clear center of the heavy drinking scene and particularly with the hospitalization of another high school prospect during a campus visit, I would be all over the A.D. like a ton of bricks. But, unfortunately, the Athletic Directors sometimes have more clout with the alumni groups than the President.</p>

24

<p>Did you ever stop to consider the fact that not all athletes or athletic programs encourage drinking? I know some athletes that have a very high fitness level, and do not consume alcohol at all while they are in training or otherwise.</p>

<p>It may be that those who associate drinking with all athletes were never really athletic themselves, and can not appreciate the physical demands of competitive athletics! Maybe those who continuously make such statements never quite made the team, and perhaps resent those who did. Who knows.........</p>

25

<p>Interesteddad:
Yes, I agree that there is great variation from college to college. My point was that generalizations regarding one group or another can be misleading. I didn't even address the part about the jocks leading others into drinking... college kids have their own minds and make their own choices. Isn't the temptation of drink and drug somewhat timeless? And for young people in particular, regardless of what they're doing with their lives-working/school?</p>

<p>My daughter just spent an overnight at each of two LACs, and her hosts were all drinking and staying up all night (midweek!) She was not alarmed by it, but still surprised. She's at a boarding HS, so she's seen it all, but with curfews, rules, and severe consequences for violations. It is amazing how many continue to drink and drug in spite of the threat of mandatory rehad and/or expulsion!</p>

26

<p>"Drinking is very prevalent at the secluded colleges where there is not much going on around the community and life is mainly on campus. </p>

<p>I wonder if that is statistically proven? </p>

<p>Mini - do you know?"</p>

<p>Being residential and rural are both associated (among other associations) with higher rates of binge and heavy drinking. Beyond that, it is not possible to go - who is to say "not much is happening in the surrounding community" and "life is mainly on campus" (rather hard to measure quantitatively.)</p>

<p>Athletics and spectator sports (that is, drinking among spectators associated with watching sports) are both associated with higher rates of binge and heavy drinking. I don't know exactly why that should be - I too (being nerdy and geeky) would have thought that regular heavy drinking would result in overall poorer performance, and hence be discouraged. There are sports I'm told where the subculture tends to be very "straitlaced" (women's gymnastics) and others where the opposite tends to be the case (men's icehockey), but, as 1Sokkermom points out, it really isn't intuitively obvious, or shouldn't be.</p>

<p>And it's hard to know how much the coach/athletic director knows either. Two weeks ago at my alma mater, a basketball recruit was hospitalized because of too much drinking. (Hospitalization here is big deal - the nearest hospital is 8 miles away.) The athletic director said it was the first time he had heard of such an incident in his six years in the job. Members of the team, however, said they could remember several such incidents, just in the years they had been there. So there is some kind of disconnect, and, I imagine, this could be the case at other schools as well. <a href="http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?section=news&view=article&id=7301%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?section=news&view=article&id=7301&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Anyhow, there are plenty of things colleges could do, and they always have "good reasons" not to do them.</p>

27

<p>The Alcohol Report issued by a highly-ranked LAC last week found that the athletes on its campus were a major center of drinking. In fact, that was one of the key findings of the survey data:</p>

<p>
[quote]
The effect of athletic participation is statistically significant for a large number of variables.</p>

<p>The survey found that athletes drink more and more often than non-athletes:</p>

<p>-- 79% of athletes are drinkers vs. 66% of non-athletes</p>

<p>-- 27% of athletes (vs. 14% of non-athletes) report the heaviest amount of drinking (10 or more drinks per week)</p>

<p>-- 35% of male athletes report in this heaviest category (10+/wk) of alcohol usage</p>

<p>-- 44% of athletes report having five or more drinks in one sitting on six or more occasions this academic year compared to just 26% of non-athletes</p>

<p>Athletes more often perceive alcohol as a critical aspect of their social experience...</p>

<p>-- 41% of athletes (vs. 25% of non-athletes) strongly agree that social life would suffer if alcohol were to be more restricted

[/quote]
</p>

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<p>.......and we all know that a single survey (or data set) that may or may not be statistically sound and completely unbiased is the gospel!</p>

29

<p>
[quote]
The athletic director said it was the first time he had heard of such an incident in his six years in the job.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Baloney. The A.D. is blowing smoke on this.</p>

<p>in 2003, following a series of pre-frosh hospitalizations for alcohol poisoning over a period of years, the Dean of the College sent an e-mail to every student on campus, reaffirming the responsibilities of overnight hosts to NOT serve their guests alcohol or take them to events where alcohol is being served or host them on weekends for this specfic reason. At the time, the Admissions Office and Purple Key Society also instituted written notification of prosects and their parents that drinking during their visit was prohibited and that rules violations would impact their admissions.</p>

<p>In the 2003 article, Athletic Director Sheehey was clearly aware of the problem. He was quoted as follows in the Williams Record:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Moreover, Harry Sheehy, director of athletics, will meet with members of the Athletics Department, senior staff and members of the Student-Athlete Advisory committee to establish standards for student-athlete hosting, just as the Purple Key Society has done for their hosting. </p>

<p>“We do not have anything written in stone as yet,” Sheehy said. “We have made no decision on having a parent or pre-frosh sign anything. We have heard that other schools require this. Our department is simply interested in the safety and well-being of all parties involved.”

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yet, two years later, when a recruit was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning on a Saturday night visit arranged by the athletic department (in violation of campus-wide policy), it was clear that Sheehey had NOT instituted a written policy:</p>

<p>
[quote]
“There will be a new written baseline policy, augmented by individual team rules,” Sheehy said. “Parents and athletes need to realize what our standards are.”

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Where was Sheehy's leadership on this issue for the last two years or the five years since he's been A.D.? Given the problems with pre-frosh hospitalizations at the school (they had one nearly die in April 2000) and given Sheehey's stonewalling on the issue in the intervening years, I think the administration should come down on him like a ton of bricks. There is no reason that athletic visits should be governed by a different set of standards and rules. It's the same double-speak from the A.D. that fraternity leaders spout about dry pledge events and so forth.</p>

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<p>1Sokkermom, Methinks you protest too much. The surveys (and the survey instruments) have been validated across literally hundreds of campuses, and for more than a decade. (ID did get one of his soundbites wrong, though: "In one striking contrast, 25 percent of non-athletes and 82 percent of male athletes agreed that social life would suffer if drinking were subject to more restrictions on campus." Speaking of silencing...) At any rate, this one simply confirmed data they had gathered in a previous survey 18 months earlier, which showed pretty much the same thing. There were no great surprises in the data to those on campus (or so the headline in the college paper said.)</p>

<p>But your point is well-taken and worthy of further discussion: it is NOT intuitively obvious WHY athletes should have higher heavy drinking rates. Is it the impact of the surrounding culture? A subculture promoted in the sport? At the school? Are there examples of schools with similar sportsmindedness where heavy drinking rates are radically different? Why some sports and not others? What is the impact of "spectators"? And does the athletic subculture have that much greater impact at LACs than at larger schools?</p>

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<p>Hey Mini, methinks I was not protesting anything. I honestly believe, like many other posters, that students drink at all campuses. Methinks that there are many of you in denial about the amount of drinking at schools that do not have an athletic culture (whatever that means).</p>

32

<p>My D also just came back from an overnight at a LAC and had a similar experience and reaction. Although she knew intellectually that her experience could have been different had her host not been a big time partier, it still left a bad taste in her mouth. She decided not to apply ED to this school. If she is accepted, she will try again and hope for a better experience.</p>

33

<p>"Hey Mini, methinks I was not protesting anything. I honestly believe, like many other posters, that students drink at all campuses. Methinks that there are many of you in denial about the amount of drinking at schools that do not have an athletic culture (whatever that means)."</p>

<p>I do this for a living, and so I think I have some sense of what this is about. (If you were not protesting the accuracy of the survey, I apologize.) And, as I've insisted scores of time, students DO drink at all campuses. But the differences among the campuses are as great or greater than the similarities, for, given what you insist to be the case (that there is drinking on all campuses), the differences lie in the degree of heavy and/or binge drinking as opposed to the amount of moderate drinking, and how that impacts campus culture. The differences are huge, even among the secular LACs.</p>

<p>As I also wrote, I don't think it is intuitively obvious why there should be an association between athletics and heavy drinking. The data indicate that there is (though there are at least 9 other associated factors), but why I would think is something parents might think worth addressing.</p>

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<p>The fact is that there really is not any objective study with which to compare the drinking scenes at different colleges. The study that is almost invariably cited is Wechlser, or some variant of his random, anonymous surveys. Wechsler's work, despite his position at Harvard's School of Public Health (OMG...Harvard!) leaves a lot to be desired. The critique below is worth a look to put it in perspective. Wechlser engages in advocacy research, i.e., he has a point he wants to make (and books he wants to sell), and his research is tailored to provide results that prove his preconceived point, and will ensure bookings on the morning TV shows. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.alcoholfacts.org/Wechsler.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.alcoholfacts.org/Wechsler.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Some of our local results show a major distinction between level of athletes' drinking during their athletic season and during off season. During off season, drinking being greater than non athlete peers.</p>

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<p>I'm impressed at high school seniors who check out party-hearty schools and decide such schools are not for them.</p>

<p>Isn't the more common scenario that reasonably level-headed kids are away from home for the first time, and jump on the heavy drinking bandwagon at schools where drinking is a big part of the social scene (and it sounds like that is the case at most schools)?</p>

<p>My high school student is VERY social and I am concerned about how to guide her in the coming years so that she does not indulge in binge drinking.</p>

37

<p>I think that's a question that is so hard to answer. It would be so easy if there was a single speech that parents could give and ensure that their children wouldn't go down the wrong road. I was one of those children who didn't go down that road. I never even had a drink until college and then I rarely did and never heavily. To this day I've never smoked a cigarette or anything else. I've also never done an illegal drug. I did all this while maintaining a high social activity level that even involved being extremely active in a sorority which people normally assume means you were drunk all of the time. I've had people ask me many times what did your parents say to you so I can tell my kids the exact same thing. My answer is, I can't ever remember my parents sitting me down and saying don't do this, don't do that. I can't ever remember having a "drug talk" or "don't abuse alcohol talk". I chose to not do these things because I never honestly was interested in them. </p>

<p>I think the single biggest influence on kids is who they choose to hang out with. I can remember my mother telling me that the scariest thing she ever did was send my sister and me to college not knowing what would happen. Luckily I quickly made a lot of friends with similar interests and so the alcohol, drugs, etc. never became an issue. I suppose it could have easily gone the other way if the only friends I'd found were constantly doing these types of activities. I wish I could be more helpful, but I really think there's not one particular thing you could say to your daughter. Encourage her to choose her friends wisely.</p>

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<p>I would think that the drinking level on most college campuses, especially over a weekend, would make many high school students uncomfortable. They often have little experience with it being done so openly and it is surprising and a little embarassing to see what are mostly first year students acting out. After hearing about the variety of college experiences that my daughter and her friends have been having for the past two+ years I think that the real issue is whether you have a child that will work to find the students that don't binge drink if they so chose - even if for academic reasons they decide to attend a school known for a dominant drinking culture. I know of a number of students at LACs known for heavy alcohol use (including Williams) that don't drink at all or drink sparingly and are quite happy... BUT they headed off to school with a pretty strong sense of self and had to work to find their group. </p>

<p>When my daughter went through her college application process a university setting in an urban area was at the top of her search criteria. Second on the list was having choices regarding her social life. During her first year I walked through the lobby of Carman Hall on a number of weekend mornings when the remains of someone having been physically ill the night before had not been cleaned up yet. Students are eye-balled by security as they come in and if they are too far gone they are sent to St. Lukes Hospital and hooked up to an IV but that never stopped anyone who wanted to do shots from partaking. As the parent of a possible applicant on a tour I would have reacted strongly but I now realize that it is much more about your child and the choices that they make....as well as going to a school where they can find their group, no matter that it is not the dominant group at the school. Some kids are going to be stupid about their drinking no matter how smart they are academically. Some students seem to be able to drink moderately and not get carried away by the notion of getting plastered as a cool thing. My daughter has been exposed to alcohol at our dinner table for years and is now a legal drinker but still has some things to figure out regarding her body, alcohol, what tastes good or bad and how much she can handle.</p>

<p>Regarding the athlete/alcohol discussion:
I think that it would be interesting see the alcohol abuse stats broken down by sport. Until college my daughter was a multi-sport athlete and thought as a general rule that the endurance sports had less serious drinking than field sports. I know that field athletes train hard - that does not need to be pointed out to me - but I do have thoughts about the culture of some field sports that alcohol stats broken down by sport might substantiate.</p>

39

<p>it is NOT intuitively obvious WHY athletes should have higher heavy drinking rates. Is it the impact of the surrounding culture? A subculture promoted in the sport? At the school? Are there examples of schools with similar sportsmindedness where heavy drinking rates are radically different? Why some sports and not others? What is the impact of "spectators"? And does the athletic subculture have that much greater impact at LACs than at larger schools?</p>

<p>Interesting questions
in casual research of schools- we noticed that the media reported wilder behavior associated with big universities where football was very popular
there is a drinking subculture associated with this- tailgate parties- flasks at games- rival fights stepped up by the amount of drinking the fans do which sometimes escalate into riots.</p>

<p>While this doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of academics at the school or the daily life of most of the student body- a big university/a school where sports including football was a big part of the school identity, was at the bottom of things we looked for.</p>

<p>It seems that students and alumni enjoy getting themselves all worked up in preparation for the *big game and while I understand the attraction to doing so- D wanted to be at a school where academics were the attraction.

[quote]
some long time traditions are getting a closer look it seems
ale University is banning drinking games from this year's football game against Harvard and will shut down all tailgate parties after halftime, the latest rules aimed at preventing binge drinking outside one of college football's oldest rivalry games.
The Nov. 19 contest, known simply as "The Game," dates to 1875 and draws nearly as many fans outside the stadiums as inside. Students and alumni frequently fill U-Haul trucks with beer kegs, grills and hard alcohol and set up elaborate buffet spreads under party tents.
"Tailgating at 'The Game' is huge," said Yale senior Alan Kennedy-Shaffer. "Everyone will go to the tailgate and only some of them will go to the game. Some will stay at the tailgate until they get kicked out."
Some students and alumni said they worry the changes will hurt the character of a game that for many is a daylong family and class reunion. Tailgate parties come in all styles, with some catering to the domestic beer crowd and others offering champagne and shrimp cocktail.
"Unless you have a personal interest in the game - you're a former player or you have a child who's playing - it's as much about the tailgating as it is about the game of football," said Brian Ameche, a 1975 Yale graduate......
"I doubt most people who plan on tailgating the entire day will even know that they'll be thrown out at halftime, so it could be a fairly interesting situation," he said.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think interesting situation- will prove to be an understatement ;)</p>

40

<p>This was on our local news last night:</p>

<p><a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=consumer&id=3615858%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=consumer&id=3615858&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>