Is College Binge Drinking on the Wane?

3/16/2010

Family Goes Strong

By Barbara Kantrowitz

If you’ve sent a kid off to college anytime in the last decade, chances are one of your biggest concerns was that he or she would succumb to binge drinking. Reports of this phenomenon are all over the media and they are scary. Campuses all around the country have dealt with numerous cases of students – typically freshman – drinking so much alcohol in a short period that they end up in the emergency room, and sometimes even the morgue.

Now, there may be some good news and a chance for parents to breathe a little easier. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Brandon Busteed, the founder and chief executive of Outside the Classroom, a company that deals with campus drinking problems, claims that many institutions are making “real progress toward reducing high-risk drinking.” Busteed says many institutions have devoted significant resources toward fixing the problem of high-risk drinking, which for men, is defined as five or more drinks over two hours and for women, four or more drinks over two hours. (A drink is one 12-ounce beer, 4 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits or 1 ounce of 100-proof spirits.)

Busteed says colleges have tried a number of different methods. At Maryland’s Frostburg State University, which claims to have lowered its high-risk drinking rate by 27 percent in 10 years, extensive outreach with local police and landlords helped curb off-campus partying, Busteed says. Indiana University conducted a campaign to education incoming students about some of the myths and realities of college drinking. For example, most freshmen think everyone is getting wasted all the time. In fact, only a minority of students drink excessively at most campuses.  Many other campuses have opened alcohol-free dorms and buildings so that students who don’t want to drink have a place where they can feel comfortable.

Universities can’t do it all, of course. Parents have to step up as well. For some advice on how to talk to your teenagers about drinking, check out these tips from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Human Services Administration (SAMHSA).

Link to blog post: http://www.familygoesstrong.com/college-binge-drinking-wane