130 Colleges, Universities, and Greek Organizations Mandate Online Alcohol Prevention

8/15/2005

Trend Illustrates Renewed Effort to Help College Students Make Safe Decisions About Alcohol

BOSTON, MA - August 15, 2005 - This fall, more than 150,000 college students will complete an online alcohol prevention program in an effort by campus and Greek organization administrators to ensure that students have the skills they need to make safe and healthy decisions about alcohol. According to a March 2005 report from the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), the problem of college drinking exceeds previous estimates. The report cites more than 1700 alcohol-related deaths and 2.8 million cases of driving under the influence in 2001. Previous estimates also suggest 500,000 injuries, 70,000 sexual assaults, and 159,000 first-year student dropouts due to alcohol and other drugs every year.

Now more than ever, colleges, universities, and Greek organizations are taking positive, proactive steps to address alcohol before it becomes a problem. In fact, this fall 130 institutions and Greek organizations are taking the bold step of requiring an online alcohol prevention program called AlcoholEdu for College®.

By requiring all first-year students - or new members, in the case of Greek organizations - to complete AlcoholEdu for College, these institutions are taking advantage of Population-Level Prevention®, a method of prevention that leverages students' social networks to produce significant improvement in alcohol-related perception and behaviors, and inspire social and cultural change. Institutions delivering the course to their entire student body are not only changing individual students' behavior but are also changing the culture of drinking on their campuses.

AlcoholEdu for College is an online, non-opinionated prevention program used on more than 450 campuses around the country. The program, which takes about two-and-a-half hours to complete, integrates proven prevention techniques into the science-based curriculum. AlcoholEdu for College is customized based on each student's drinking behaviors, sex, and readiness to change, providing a highly personalized experience. It includes three confidential surveys which provide success metrics for the institution after students have completed the course. AlcoholEdu for College was developed by Boston-based Outside The Classroom, Inc.

An independent, third-party evaluation of AlcoholEdu for College, undertaken by Andrew Wall, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, revealed that students who completed AlcoholEdu for College experienced approximately 50% fewer negative health, social, and academic consequences during the academic year than students who had not yet taken the course.

"High-risk drinking on college campuses has been allowed to flourish for too long without any true prevention programming," said Brandon Busteed, Founder and CEO of Outside The Classroom. "We congratulate these colleges, universities, and Greek organizations for taking the first step in maximizing their students' health and safety."

The institutions and Greek organizations providing the program to all incoming students and new members include a cross-section of today's U.S. institutions. They are public and private, large and small, and span the country, including University of California, Berkeley; Villanova University; Colorado State University; California State University, Chico; Miami University of Ohio; Bowling Green State University; University of Connecticut; and University of Southern California.