College Student Success Stories

By Hugh C. McBride

There’s a reason why articles about alcohol abuse on college campuses rarely contain the words “good news.” Binge drinking, underage drinking and other problems related to the abuse of alcohol continue to plague colleges and universities throughout the nation.

But interspersed among the many troubling reports about overindulgence on campus are a few signs that the proverbial tide may be beginning to turn.

Sober saturdays at Penn State

A Big 10 school with a big reputation for hard-partying students (it was named the nation’s No. 1 party school in the 2009 edition of the Princeton Review’s annual college rankings), Penn State University might seem to be a strange place in which to pursue sobriety.

But as staff writer Caitlin Sellers reported in the Nov. 13 edition of the school newspaper, The Collegian, the PSU student center is now the site of weekly “Saturday Night Sober” meetings for students who wish to remain alcohol-free.

The brainchild of graduate student Steven F. (keeping with the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous, the student told The Collegian that he preferred not to give his last name), the Saturday sessions were established to provide an on-campus alternative to the traditional party scene, Sellers reported:

The meetings are not exclusive to Penn State students, but the time and location is designed specifically to draw students, said Stephen Shetler, an addiction specialist at the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

“The only requirement for membership [in Alcoholics Anonymous] is the desire to stop drinking,” Shetler said. “And there are students looking for that support, especially on a Saturday night.”

The founder of the meetings told The Collegian that he hoped the meetings would help students who might otherwise allow collegiate overindulgence to wreak havoc on post-school lives.

“It’s obviously no mystery that it’s a big drinking school,” Steven F. said in the article. “My interpretation is that there’s a vast majority of kids that are not going to develop a problem … But for this subpopulation, they’re going to get out [of college] and not be able to moderate their drinking.”

Hoosiers making progress

On Nov. 12, the University of Indiana issued a press release to announce evidence of progress in the school’s effort to combat alcohol abuse and binge drinking among students. The release heralded the following set of statistics:

The percentage of IU students who consumed more than five drinks in a week went from 42.8 percent in 2006 to 37.5 percent in 2009, a 12.4 percent decrease.
The percentage of IU students who engaged in binge drinking in the previous two weeks went from 60.3 percent in 2006 to 56.8 percent in 2009, a 5.8 percent decrease.
The percentage of IU students who have experienced legal troubles or received disciplinary action in the previous two weeks went from 15.3 percent in 2006 to 12.3 percent in 2009, a 19.6 percent decrease.
The percentage of IU students who have driven while intoxicated went from 38.4 percent in 2006 to 22.6 percent in 2009, a 41.1 percent decrease.

A former “winner” of the Princeton Review’s party school list (2002), IU has instituted a number of preventive measures and awareness initiatives, including a “don’t drink and drive” campaign, a proactive student judicial system, and a requirement that all new students complete a two-to-three-hour online alcohol education course.

“In the past, our rates have been higher than the rest of the country,” Dee Owens, director of the school’s Alcohol-Drug Information Center, said in the release. “Now, instead of looking at our numbers going up or just staying steady — which is considered a great success — we saw our numbers go down in every category.”

Turning the tide in Virginia

In the span of a few autumn months in 1997, five college students in Virginia died of alcohol-related causes. In response, the state’s attorney general, Richard Cullen, formed a task force and commissioned a report on alcohol abuse among college students throughout the state.

“Death is the most dreadful and high-profile consequence of binge drinking by college students. But alcohol abuse also has been, and continues to be, a major factor in rape, sexual assault, violence, health problems, and property damage on campus,” the task force wrote in the introduction to its report. “Alcohol abuse by college students can no longer be viewed as an acceptable rite of passage. The time has come for Virginians to confront binge drinking on our campuses.”

The task force’s report also included 65 recommendations directed at a range of individuals and organizations, including students, parents, law enforcement personnel, alumni associations, state agencies and legislators, and the schools themselves.

At Radford University, the battle against student drinking began with an effort to crack down on on-campus parties, and progressed to the formation of a working partnership between the school and the community in which it is located. Tonia Moxley of the Roanoke Times described this collaborative effort in part of the paper’s special report, “Under 21: Drinking on Virginia College Campuses”:

Each week, someone from the dean of students office requests city police arrest and citation records and cross-checks them for student names. Those students are referred to the student conduct office under a “three strikes” alcohol policy that can lead to suspension or dismissal.

According to university statistics, administrators have processed an average of 873 alcohol-related conduct violations per year since 2002. Violations spiked at 1,221 during the 2005-06 school year, and dropped last year to a low of 739.

In addition to various sanctions, the process includes mandatory education programs and, in more serious cases, mandatory professional counseling, Dean of Students Trae Cotton said.

Bradford isn’t the only Virginia college to partner with local officials, Moxley noted, reporting that Virginia Tech has a similar relationship with the Blacksburg police department.

An uphill struggle

As a number of schools have demonstrated, student-led programs, university-wide awareness campaigns and school-police partnerships can have an impact in the effort to reduce rates of alcohol abuse among college students.

But the harsh reality of the matter is that the relatively few success stories remain dwarfed by continued increases in alcohol abuse, binge drinking and other types of dangerous substance use.

“Twenty-three percent of college students meet the criteria for drug addiction or alcohol abuse as compared to 10 percent of the general population,” Joseph Califano, director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said in an Oct. 26 article by Dave Matlow of WestportNow.com.

And the struggle continues.