<p>I've heard that williams has a huge drinking problem, is there any truth to that?</p>
<p>No . . . . . . .</p>
<p>Alcohol use and abuse on college campuses is pretty much universal, and I'm unaware of any reliable source that makes Williams more problematic in this regard than any of its peers. Some schools deal with the issue openly, and Williams is one of them. Others are more circumspect in dealing with it--or don't really address it at all. The author of the article below served as president of both Trinity College and Amherst College. I suggest that you visit your colleges and form your own opinion.</p>
<p>I agree with driver. My daughter (a non-partier) had overnights at several colleges as a recruited athlete. They ALL have plenty of drinking going on, but from what she saw, the drinking at Williams seemed less self-destructive than some of the other schools. Her overriding impression of the place was that its filled with bright, interesting, multi-talented people that shed love to hang out with for four years. The alcohol issueand it was definitely something she thought aboutwas a non-issue after the visit.</p>
<p>Mini--- If nothing else, you have to give the college props for publishing the data from that survey. How many colleges would have the balls to put that stuff in the public domain?</p>
<p>A lot of schools publish their alcohol data -- especially schools that are trying to address a problem with education efforts. Dartmouth has even published the percentage of their students who puke in public or urinate in public in an average year.</p>
<p>Try searches at various school websites for "binge drinking" or similar terms.</p>
<p>4pple, Some kids drink more than is good for them, at Williams and at many other schools. I wouldn't characterize drinking as a "huge problem" in the overall campus culture though at specific times alcohol abuse might be a "huge problem" for a specific individual. Bad things can and do happen at good colleges and Williams is no exception. </p>
<p>As a general statement, Williams kids are happy and the school has enormous positives. Its reputation as one of the best LACs in the country is well deserved. If you're looking for rigorous academics, accessible and brillant professors who are teachers first, a profoundly beautiful natural environment and friendly, active, talented, confident kids -- then Williams has it all.</p>
<p>Go visit. Most kids have an immediate visceral reaction -- they either love it or hate it. </p>
<p>There are many good reasons not to choose Williams: too small, too remote, too cold, too active, too extroverted, too many athletes, too many distribution requirements, not enough diversity, not enough aid, weak language programs, no engineering, no core curriculum, no Starbucks, no Gap, no multiplex cinema and on and on but the perception that excessive drinking will negatively color your experience is exaggerated.</p>
<p>S has done athletic recruiting visits at a number of DI and DIII schools, including Williams. He was at Williams for 2 nights. I asked him what he felt the drinking culture was like (he is not one to turn down a beer....) He said he did not see it as a problem- much less than some schools. He described it as groups of people sitting around having a few beers rather than doing keg stands and beer pong. Of course, he is not in a sport where it is advisable to be drinking heavily at this time of year, so I'm sure he didn't see the worst of it. Bottom line is that there is a lot of drinking at all colleges and Williams did not stand out in any way.</p>
<p>I am interested in seeing how this survey data is acted on.</p>
<p>"Mini--- If nothing else, you have to give the college props for publishing the data from that survey. How many colleges would have the balls to put that stuff in the public domain?"</p>
<p>I not only should, I have done so, repeatedly. They know they have a (to quote the Record) a "pervasive problem", and the first step to dealing with it is making public that it exists. </p>
<p>Experimental data suggests that the Williams survey actually understates the problem (though it is similar to the data they made public in their diversity report from two years earlier). That is because folks who drink "4 drinks in a sitting" (and hence not defined as "binge drinkers") usually underestimate by one, and, if it is hard liquor, the average student, when asked to measure out a standard drink actually pours 1.75 drinks. In other words, the non-binge-drinking 4-drink drinker on average will have had 8.75 drinks, if it was hard liquor. I'm betting that it is hard liquor that the college administration will end up turning its sights on - there are rarely hospitalizations from beer.</p>
<p>The Williams survey is rare (and to be congratulated) by its attempt to try to estimate "heavy drinking". It is rare for a "binge drinker", however defined, to have done so only once in the past two weeks, but very few college surveys attempt to gauge incidence.</p>
<p>As to whether folks should like it, I would say, "Look: the data all indicate that heavy drinking/binge drinking is more common at Williams than at many likeminded schools. This is not at all surprising, as Williams has every single risk factor found to be associated with heavy alcohol use by the Harvard School of Public Health except fraternities. It is also true that a large number of students like it that way. And it is also true that, as at other schools, probably about a quarter of the student body doesn't drink at all. You might love the school, or hate it, and that's up to you to find out."</p>
<p>And then, as I do with all schools, I would encourage a Thursday night overnite.</p>
<p>The other thing to add is that this might "feel" differently for men than for women. The survey indicated that frequent drinking and heavy drinking are more common for men, and as 72% of the entire population drinks weekly, the figures for men likely approach 80%. For better or for worse, the cultural characteristics of a coed campus are often set primarily by men.</p>
<p>To the OP and SV2:
By all means, follow this through the Record. There will be a great deal of public discussion of the issue, as there is at Williams on any important issue. That's the way they do things. In fact, you might want to search the archives back to fall of 2003, which is when the ball started rolling, resulting in this student survey. I reject any assertion that Williams is unique among its peers as far as drinking. However, the college feels that it can present a danger there, as it can elsewhere, and has chosen to address it publically. Last year I expressed the hope that the college would use other criteria than the flawed Wechsler Study definition of "binge" drinking; Unfortunately, they didn't, and I'm pleased to see from the student editorial, and the original article, that the students taking the survey recogized its shortcomings, and objected. This subject has been discussed ad nauseum, here, as any search in this Williams forum for the SNs "driver" "mini" or "interesteddad" or the word "wechsler" will reveal. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that Williams' reputation for "a huge drinking problem" was almost single-handedly created right here.</p>
<p>To some extent I agree. Having experience with both Harvard and Williams, I have found no real differences in the extent to which students drank at both schools. There may be a difference, but I certainly haven't noticed it. In fact, at my time at Williams, I felt there was not much drinking at all.. certainly less than at my high school. I didn't even realize that Williams had this reputation until I stumbled across the boards.</p>
<p>Williams clearly feels that this is a problem worth tackling (and they are very public about it), so kudos to them. Who knows what the administrations at other schools think? I bet they are more tight-lipped than Williams.</p>
<p>My concern is that prospective students and parents read these threads, and immediately cross Williams off of their lists. It is a wonderful place on many different levels, and the natural beauty and opportunity for outdoor activities are unsurpassed.`It would be a shame for students not to give Williams a fair shake.</p>
<p>So perhaps we can lay this issue to rest, and let people make their own decisions.</p>
<p>The article about the survey is interesting, but there are some things about it that I don't understand. The Record gives the impression that the survey was voluntary and completed by roughly half of those on campus. It also says that the results are good to within 3%.</p>
<p>With a sample that is half of the entire student body, it seems inconsistant that the results are only accurate to within 3%.</p>
<p>Also, with voluntary participation, wouldn't the results have a possible sampling bias that could skew them one way or the other? This would not necessarily explain the inconsistancy mentioned above and is another explanation of why the percentage of athletes in the result is so large. Since athletes seem to drink more than others, it could mean that the problem is not as large as the survey says.</p>
<p>Finally, another hazzard of voluntary surveys is that someone with an agenda can try to stuff the ballot box to make a point. Were precautions taken to make sure that did not happen?</p>
<p>I guess what I'm asking is this - was the survey properly taken to make the result accurate and meaningful, or is it just a sloppy survey that is getting publicity due to shocking, but inaccurate results?</p>
<p>That is the standard mechanism for all college surveys these days: a mass mailing to student e-mail accounts. 50% participation isn't that low. </p>
<p>The results weren't shocking. The binge drinking rate was actually about 5% lower than the last time they surveyed several years ago. That would be consistent with minority enrollment increasing about 5%, especially of Asian-American and African-American students -- the two ethnic groups with the lowest binge drinking rates. Williams has also cut back about 8% on the number of recruited athletes with below average academic qualifications and most of that cutback has come at the expense of football and ice hockey (historically big drinking groups).</p>
<p>If there were any bias effects, it may have been that the large amount of attention to the drinking issue on campus over the last two years.</p>
<p>Both Clayleas and ID raise important points as to the usefulness of these kinds of anonymous, mass-mailed email surveys. I would be less concerned about someone trying to stuff the ballot box, and more interested in who opted to take the survey, and why. For example, my daughter didn't bother with the survey. Why not ?, I asked. Well, she said, I get all kinds of junk in my emailbox, and I have too many other things on my plate. I don't see a big problem, and I'm busy. </p>
<p>So...is she typical of the 1/2 of the student body that didn't take the survey? Did half the students not respond because the don't see a problem, or is it that the other students didn't respond because they were passed out after their daily round of "binge drinking?" [facetious remark]. We don't know. We also don't know how many of the respondents may have been pranksters, or otherwise atypical of students interested in the subject.</p>
<p>As for bias...and I mean that in the non-judgemental scientific sense...I think that the large amount of attention paid to drinking at Williams since the incident in 2001 where a high school prospect drank herself into a near-coma has definitely colored any discussion of alcohol on the campus. That incident occurred during the first semester of Morty Schapiro's presidency, and by his own admission, turned him into an obsessive crusader on the subject of campus drinking. I don't think that there is anything unique about the alcohol culture at Williams College, but I do think that their public and pervasive effort to ensure that students don't hurt themselves while drinking may be unique.</p>
<p>ID,
A 50% response rate is way more than necessary to get accurate results if you have a representative sample. I suspect that a response from 5% of the student body would be more than sufficient if you have the right 5% in the sample. On the other hand, a voluntary sample of 50% can, and probably did, lead to all kinds of inaccuracies in the results. </p>
<p>Regarding your comparison to the last survey, which I suspect was equally as flawed, I think you are reading much to much into the results. There is just no basis for concluding that higher minority representation and fewer recruited athletes on campus accounts for a drop (that may or may not even exist) in binge drinking. </p>
<p>I believe that drinking on campus is an important issue that should be addressed. I just wish that the College would conduct a well designed survey so they could study it properly.</p>
<p>My experience at Williams suggests that there is considerable polling and survey expertise on campus.</p>
<p>I don't know which survey instrument Williams used last spring (the CSEQ survey, the ESS survey, or one of the COFHE surveys), but all of these are nationally available commercial surveys, specifically engineered for higher education customers, that have been administered at places like Williams and virtually every other school on a regular basis for decades.</p>
<p>This is not a tricky survey challenge because you aren't dealing with a small representative sample. You are surveying the entire population with a very high response rate - typically 50% to 60%. Don't blame the survey.</p>
<p>The reason the percentage of Asian-Americans and African-Americans matters is that, nationally, both student groups binge drink at half the rate of white students. Thus, for every white student you replace with an Asian-American or African-American student (as Williams has done over the last five years), the binge drinking rate is statistically likely to decline.</p>
<p>Similarly, athletes tend to binge drink at higher rates than non-athletes nationally -- findings that have been consistently supported by both recent Williams surveys.</p>