AlcoholEdu isn't like the typical just-say-no-to-drugs-and-alcohol lecture some college students dread during freshman orientation, course creators say.
| The program |
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Pre-test: A 20-minute assessment measures knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.
Two-hour presentation: Charts and diagrams offer information about alcohol and its effects on the body.
Exercises: Quiz questions, interactive situations and case studies.
Final exam: A 25-minute test provides a record of the student's comprehension.
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It's online.
It takes three hours.
You can complete the course whenever and wherever you want.
And the message is drink responsibly.
It's a message members of one college sorority can't ignore come fall.
Kappa Alpha Theta, which has chapters at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Albion College, recently mandated the course for members.
The mandate comes amid recent studies finding an increase in college binge drinking, particularly among women 18 to 23.
Binge drinkers are defined as women who consume four or more alcoholic beverages in one sitting or men who consume five or more drinks in one sitting.
Despite a Harvard University study that found stable trends among college-age men and women nationwide in 2001, the number of female binge drinkers at U-M jumped between 1999 and 2001, according to a study released in March.
Last year, 51 percent of U-M undergraduate women said they engaged in binge drinking, up from 42 percent in 1999, figures from the U-M Substance Abuse Research Center show.
Overall, binge drinking rose at U-M from 45 percent in 1999 to 50 percent in 2001.
MSU, on the other hand, is an anomaly, said Jasmine Greenamyer, an alcohol health educator at Olin Health Center.
One-third of MSU women binge-drank in 2002, down from 47 percent in 2000.
The overall results are even more promising, Greenamyer said. The percentage of binge drinkers plummeted from 62 in 2000 to 39 in 2002.
At U-M, senior Monica Rose said some of her peers, especially students new to college life, can't differentiate between moderate drinking and getting smashed, something AlcoholEdu attempts to address.
Many students "don't know when enough is enough," said Rose, president of the Panhellenic Association, an organization of 15 U-M sororities. "There's a glamorous appeal when you first start college. People tend to forget what alcohol abuse can be."
Rose, who hasn't taken an AlcoholEdu course but is familiar with its format, said its educational approach and the medium through which it is delivered will probably make college students receptive. It's a stark contrast to the traditional, preachy speakers that come to campus, she said.
But Henry Wechsler, the lead author of the Harvard study and director of college alcohol studies at the Harvard School of Public Health, said that educational tools alone don't reduce binge drinking.
"What the campus is doing above and beyond just education . . . they all enhance each other," said Brandon Busteed, founder and CEO of Outside the Classroom, the Boston-based health-education company that developed AlcoholEdu. "Schools using just one approach will see much less in behavioral change."
The course is free to any student at a college that is in partnership with Outside the Classroom.
Wechsler said that in addition to educational tools, colleges need "to have policies on campus and enforcement of these policies."
One of the policies he proposes is possible disbandment of Greek organizations that have repeated alcohol violations.
"I think we have to take a very hard line with fraternities given what's gone on the last decade," he said.
But Robyn Hoffman, president of U-M's Kappa Alpha Theta chapter and a junior from Weston, Mass., said binge drinking isn't a problem that's exclusive to the Greek community.
"For all the flak they get, it's unfair," said Hoffman, listing a slew of educational programs U-M Greeks sponsor throughout the school year to address binge drinking.
Mary Jane Beach, national president of Kappa Alpha Theta, said she hopes the program is effective in her organization.
"We can't wait to see the results," she said. "Hopefully, we'll have a good story to tell."
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