About Campus
Letter to the Editor
Paula Stacey, Editor
About Campus
Dear Ms./Dr. Stacey,
I write to comment on the essay, "Do learning communities
discourage binge drinking?" in the May-June (2002) edition of "About
Campus," Vol. 7/No. 2, pp 4-13. This is a very interesting and timely
essay, one whose topic needs to be published frequently in all manner of media
outlets. Unfortunately, there are three major problems with this article, or
should I write, its "implications" that result in its adding fuel to
the "binge drinking on campus" fire rather than bringing the blaze
under control. The article assumes and by discussion proffers: 1) that
"binge drinking" is an accurate and accepted term for referring to
the problem of high-risk collegiate alcohol use, 2) that there are suggestions
about what can/should be done to address the problem, but these exclude the two
most promising and evidence-based approaches that are already in use and
producing results on numerous campuses across the country (see below), and 3)
the implication that most college students "binge drink" and
contribute to the problem discussed in the article when surveys and research
continually show this to not be the case...including the Harvard School of
Public Health that created fosters this misperception that "binge
drinking" is endemic in higher education. More to the point...
Unbeknownst to the average viewer of the popular media, there is
a significant controversy regarding the term "binge drinking." This
term, so prominently employed in your article to address the issue of high-risk
drinking by contemporary collegians, is far from the "accepted term"
by those who work in the field. From the US Department of Education to the
Higher Education Center to the prestigious "Journal of Studies on
Alcohol," all avoid this misrepresentative term. This being said, heavy
drinking is a serious problem. No one denies that. But many of my colleagues
and I have great difficulty with a definition of "binge drinking"
that is tied to "any" number of drinks, especially 4+ drinks for
women and 5+ drinks for men.
Allow me to preface my remarks on this definition of
"binge" by stating that I have no argument with referring to 4+/5+
drinks as high-risk, perhaps even abusive drinking. However, to quantify
"bingeing" as 4 +drinks in one setting for women and 5+ for men is
inaccurate at best, and may even contribute to the very problem that those
reporting "binge drinking" statistics purport to confront. First,
there is no mention of what constitutes "a drink." True, the Harvard
School of Public Health defines this in its publications, but this crucial
information does not appear to make it into your article let alone the
mainstream media that have covered this story with great zeal since its earliest
publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1994. This
"definition of a drink" is crucial information for students to have
if they are to make sense of any attempt to quantify "binge" or
high-risk drinking. For example, most students tend to relate how much they
drank by counting the "number" of beverages consumed rather than the
amount of alcohol contained in each. In so doing, the male student who has
"4 pints of beer" will have nonetheless inadvertently entered the
high-risk zone even if having paid attention to the admonishment to have four
or fewer drinks.
To tie "bingeing" to a number of drinks is, I dare say,
dangerous for two readily apparent reasons, at least to those of us who work in
this field:
First, there are those women who will have dangerously high blood
alcohol levels -- because of their size, their elevated estrogen levels while
on the pill, or because of their rapid consumption -- after only 2 or 3
"standard" drinks (a standard drink equals 10 oz of beer, 5 oz of wine,
and 1.5 oz of 80 proof spirits.). The same problem is likely of some males
having fewer than five drinks. By the same token, I am not sure that a
240-pound linebacker on the college football team is going to have a very high
blood alcohol level if he drinks 5 beers in an evening -- and herein lies the segue to point #2.
Second, students who hear all the hoopla about binge drinking by
college students and then are confronted with the 4+/5+ drinks definition are
likely not only to dismiss the "binge drinking is a problem" message
as unrealistic, but they may well dismiss everything that health educators,
administrators, parents, and other concerned individuals have to say about the
consequences of high-risk drinking that are associated with a 4+/5+ drinks
pattern. The irony is that there is significant evidence to suggest that the
very points being made by those who rail against binge drinking are true, i.e.,
those who drink this way do have lower grades, miss more classes, are involved
in more cases of violence, and vandalism. Unfortunately, because students have
tuned out what they consider to be an absurd yardstick for measuring
consumption, they may also tune out the opportunity to recognize the negative
correlation between amount consumed and grades or the positive correlation
between amount consumed and alcohol problems.
A final criticism of the term "binge drinking" as defined
above, even if we assume it is here to stay, is that it still only addresses
the tip of the "collegiate drinking iceberg." If 44.1% of students
are "binge drinkers," then 55.9% are not! When the media tell us
that binge drinking is rampant on our campuses, it does not take much to "hear"
that "all" college students are "drunken fools." You know
this is not so. I know this is not so. The Harvard research team knows this
is not so. But the media nonetheless convey this message, either by design
or neglect. While there is little if any good research to suggest that scare-tactic
approaches to community education translate into permanent changes in individual
high-risk behavior, there is mounting evidence to suggest that programming
designed to convey accurate information about the true behavioral norm for
a given population does translate into individual behavior change as the misperceptions
of the social norm are corrected.
There are several very exciting and research-based approaches to
addressing the problem of high-risk collegiate drinking that Charles Schroeder
failed to address in his interviews with Drs. Brower, Bruffee, and Zeller, or
at the least, they failed to bring up: addressing the misperception of the
social norm by students resulting in the belief that more students are drinking
more often and consuming more drinks each time they do than is the reality.
Likewise, there was no mention, at least specifically and in detail, of the
impact that comprehensive programs of environmental strategies to address the
problem of high-risk collegiate drinking have had on changing the campus
culture at institutions that have embarked on such programs.
I can go on and on about what is being done, what is working, and
how the "culture" on campuses across the country are changing. Until
and unless, however, the media, including those media specifically targeting
higher education and tailored to address the issues of higher education, begin
to temper their reporting of the "crises" in higher
education--especially regarding "binge drinking" collegians--with the
proactive programming being done on campuses by "most of us" in
higher education and by reporting what "most of our students" are
doing regarding their use of alcohol, nothing is going to change.
I close with two simple suggestions. First, we need to rethink the utility of the term "binge drinking" when referring to 4+/5+ drinks per outing. How about the term "high-risk drinking" as an alternative? Second, any discussion of collegiate drinking needs to include information about what the responsible majority of college students are doing as regards drinking. I think many will be surprised with the result.
There are myriad references I can provide to support the comments I make in this missive, but suggest just a couple reputable online references so you can consider my admonishment if you like: The Higher Education' Center's "Social Norms" information - http://www.edc.org/hec/snmrp/ plus numerous other "social norms" data at their general web site - http://www.edc.org/hec or the National Social Norms Resource Center at http://www.socialnorms.org/ or for an example of an exemplary site related to a campus doing social norms programming, Hobart-William Smith College - http://academic.hws.edu/alcohol/
To read more essays by Dr. Chapman, click HERE