It appears that every college and high school has programs aimed at moderating dangerous levels of alchohol/drug use. Have any schools been successful in creating meaningful decreases of use/abuse? If so, what are the names of the schools and what are the tactics that produced a change?
Schools in the Northeast have reduced it by cracking down on parties. Schools without frats and with a high percentage of kids playing sports, even intramurals, have less of an issue.
Pennsylvania schools still have the reputation.
It’s interesting you brought this up because my son did the online drug and alcohol seminar today. He starts this fall.
Sorry to butt in on the parent’s forum, but as a college student, I think the only way to moderate teen/young adult alcohol use is to make drinking less taboo and forbidden. Have strict drunk driving laws, especially for minors, but make alcohol part of the family mealtime environment much like they do in Europe. I live in a state where, if you are underage but in the presence of your parent, legal guardian, or adult spouse, you can drink at that person’s discretion.
Since I can drink a nice cocktail or glass of wine at dinner in a restaurant, I see no appeal in getting wasted on disgusting, cheap alcohol and potentially being harmed.
@BatesParents2019 - I’m not sure about schools without frats or the high percentage of sports and intramurals. Do you have data to support that? My son took the same online drug and alcohol seminar that your son is taking and I think - honestly - most of the kids just roll their eyes at it.
I agree with @Knittergirrl that making it less forbidden will help. I’ve even wondered about lowering the drinking age back to 18. I think being able to drink in public lessens the chance of loading up on alcohol by yourself in your dorm room before you ever go out for the evening.
One of my kids went to a school where alcohol at official parties was forbidden. Big surprise, kids “load up” before, with the risk of overdoing it. My other kid goes to a school where it’s more of a “look the other way” thing. There seems to be fewer instances of serious health consequences. Of course, all anecdotal. I remember when I was in college back in dark ages, there were no instances I can recall of people ending up at the hospital. Drinking was definitely “allowed” then.
@BTMell My son sort of rolled his eyes too but the on-line seminar just illustrates what the schools are doing.
Despite the well publicized frat “scandals”, drinking and drug use on college campuses has been declining for years. The parents of today’s college kids drank more and did more drugs. Hopefully it will continue to go down. I think about half of all college students don’t drink at all.
Frat parties are a large part of persistent drinking on campus. Visit Bucknell, Lehigh or Gettysburg for proof. Drinking happens without frats but it isn’t as systemic.
http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/niaaacollegematerials/panel01/highrisk_05.aspx indicates that the following campus characteristics correlate to high risk drinking:
- Historically black colleges and women’s colleges. (lower)
- Presence of a Greek system on campus. (higher)
- Importance of athletics on campus. (higher)
- Two-year versus 4-year institutions. (higher for 4-year)
- Substance-free residence halls and campuses. (lower for those in them)
- Commuter versus noncommuter schools. (lower for commuter)
- School size. (higher for smaller)
- Location. (higher for rural)
@ucbalumnus - thanks!
If there was a meaningful effort there, students who “pre-functioned” would be barred entrance in the first place.
I’d add a couple of items to ucb’s list in post #6, along with one qualification, all drawn from the same source cited in post #6:
Region: “Alcohol consumption rates in colleges vary by region. It has been consistently shown that students at schools in the Northeast section of the United States, followed by those in the North Central region, consume more alcohol and have higher binge drinking rates than students at colleges in other sections of the country.”
Religiosity. “Several large, multicampus studies show that students who are more religious and more committed to traditional values drink less than their peers who are less religious.”
The qualification is that while studies do show higher levels of alcohol consumption at smaller colleges, it’s not clear how much of this is due to the fact that larger schools, on average, tend to have a higher percentage of commuters, who tend to drink less. So there may be some double-counting going on here if you list both commuter v. non-commuter and large v. small.
Bottom line, if you don’t want them to drink, send them to Brigham Young. Or a Christian college in the South. Don’t send them to, e.g., Williams, a small college in the rural Northeast.
The University of Oklahoma drastically decreased its binge drinking rate after a pledge died. They forced all fraternities to become dry and cracked down on non bar drinking near campus. While most frats do not adhere to the dry campus policy, students note must know about parties ahead of time to get invited. Unfortunately, the dry campus policy also led to dramatically increased incidents of drunk driving as students now have to travel father off campus to imbibe.
Here in CA two both Chico and San Diego State have been pretty effective at tamping down their PARTY! reputations.
It’s taken several years but, both kicked out high profile frats that didn’t want to play along. They work closely with their host community so, college-centric events don’t get out of hand (police presence if needed). Residents of on-campus dorms can’t host visitors on big weekends and the halls are more closely monitored. Dorms are dry and you have to clear a desk attendant - even in the middle of the night (enforcement is highly variable due to student RAs) They make a point of publicly busting a few kids at the beginning of each semester (parents are notified in writing) to set the tone - pot smoking (or other drugs) gets you kicked out immediately (like you need to find someplace else to live effective tomorrow and you may be expelled altogether) .
Both have also become more selective which, i am sure helps. They both do a good job of offering alternative activities too.
Of course most students still drink and there are still party scenes at both schools. Find me a concentration of several thousand 18-22 year olds where that’s not the case. I am confident, during the school year, there will be several thumping keg parties every weekend - but, they don’t often devolve into the chaos that used to surround both campuses.
I think Denison’s been trying. They had such prevalence of hospitalizations and alcohol poisoning that it HAD to do something (I, for one, stopped recommending the school since I considered it a health hazard). Its frats stopped being residential. The impact of the measures will be known for real in a couple years (unless there are Denison parents or students here who can explain).
Drury’s been trying but with much less success that I know of.
Have you really cut down on college drinking if all you’ve done is moved the drinking off campus?
And for the record, UCBalumnus’s link features no study published after the year 2000 for the environmental factors meaning the data in them is 15+ years old (most of the citations are mid 90s so really 20+). An obvious question is how much things have changed in 15-20+ years.
You’re assuming they “pre-functioned” long ago enough to be visibly intoxicated. But generally I agree with you. This approach is generally more about liability than actual risk reduction.
Ok, I’ll bite. Does your state public Uni have lower drinking than neighboring state Unis?
I agree with @Knittergirrl that learning moderate drinking at home can definitely make getting wasted less appealing once kids go off to school. That is the approach we have taken with our children and so far, it is effective.
It’s not a cure-all, though. My daughter is in England this summer, where the drinking age is lower, and while she is glad to be able to go to a pub (she’s 20) and order a beer, she encounters tons of aggressive, rowdy drunk guys, especially on weekends. She says it is actually much worse than it is here in the states. Pushy drunk dudes who accost women are more tolerated over there, apparently. She’s now learned not to go to a pub after 6 p.m. on the weekends because of this.
This gibes with my experience living in the UK. Even back in the 90s when I was there, the incidence of massive drunkenness was very high among teenagers and young adults. So many American’s seem to think that lowering the drinking age will help solve the problem but as far as I can see, that would only make things worse by increasing the number of really young students learning to drink heavily.
Appears logical, but that doesn’t make it true. Is there any evidence that such works?
Yet, Knittergirl said just the opposite would result. 
btw: what we do know for certain is that a lower drinking age means more drunk teenagers in high school and drunk driving. (Note, teenage driving is not a ‘thing’ in Europe.)
Re: #11
CSU Chico’s fraternity and sorority event policy is at http://www.csuchico.edu/fsa/documents/2014%20Files/FSA%20Event%20Policy%20Packet . “Wet” events may only be held off-campus, where alcohol is served by a licensed third party vendor by cash sales only.