A Belly Full of Beer:

Another Look at College Drinking

Anyone who has been to college, visited a campus or knows someone who has knows that college students drink. While recent surveys have suggested that two-thirds of students drink one-quarter of the alcohol on campus, the remaining third consume three-quarters of the beer, wine, and liquor consumed on American campuses. With these students consuming this much alcohol, it would seem the question is how come we do not see more events like those at LSU and MIT? And why do college students, in many cases America's best and brightest, continue to engage in high risk drinking? How can students intelligent enough to be honors students in high school and admitted MIT do something as apparently foolish as drink themselves to death?

My experience at La Salle University is that students believe they are immune to the consequences of heavy drinking. Students tell me that tragedies like those at LSU and MIT result because of "bad luck" or because the students were "stupid." In short, they cannot conceive of themselves as ever being in a similar situation, that is, until it happens. And when a student does see me following an alcohol induced crisis, s/he will often use the exact same reasoning to explain her/his experience, "I have the worst luck" or "I was just stupid." This attitude is similar to a phenomenon reported in social psychology called the "just world hypothesis." This hypothesis suggests that `good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.' If something bad happens to someone, the tendency is to think, "she got what she deserved" or "he must be really stupid." When applied to college students, this phenomenon can suggest immunity when engaging in high-risk behavior because all students "know" they are good people so how can anything bad happen to them? So even when research shows us we have done an excellent job educating students about the risks of alcohol abuse, it comes as no surprise that those same students experience tragic consequences when they drink excessively. As we all know, bad things do happen to good people.

Another phenomenon that may help us understand the tragedies at LSU and MIT likewise comes from the research of social psychology. "Groupthink," as it is called, is a explanation of a particular type of group decision making. When the leadership of a cohesive group influences the group, isolated from a main stream of thinking on a particular issue, poor decisions tend to result when the group is placed under stress. The hallmarks of such flawed decision making include a group's belief that it is invincible and has a moral responsibility to act in a particular fashion. There is also a tendency to view individuals outside the group as `others' and to justify this by using stereotypes. When the group employs a buffer that insulates it from outside influence, a buffer that censors contrary or alternative view to those expressed by the group and its leadership, individual members are pressured to `fall into step' and go along with the decision of the group. Drinking to intoxication with an obvious elevation in the risk that negative consequences will occur can further muddle this entire process of group decision making. In this situation, the normal checks and balances employed in decision making are no longer in force.

Several promising approaches to addressing the issue of collegiate drinking appear to be on the horizon, several being employed at La Salle. First, the beliefs and perspectives of those students who do not drink or do so moderately (four or less drinks per occasion) are a wonderful source of information about the campus culture. We may gain a greater understanding of why these students act so responsibly and utilize this in approaches to programming. When I see students at La Salle I ask them about their views of alcohol as a substance and drinking as a behavior. I have learned some interesting things over the years. Many first-year students tell me they arrive on campus believing alcohol is the "key" to an active social life.

Another possible approach to programming comes from the research of H. Wessley Perkins, Ph.D. of Hobart-William Smith College in Geneva, NY. Dr. Perkins suggests we address student misperceptions about alcohol and drinking. To alert students to the myths of collegiate drinking, that not everyone drinks and gets drunk may shift the desire to conform from consuming more often and in greater quantity to drinking less frequently and in smaller quantities. I have found this to be true at La Salle. By simply informing students about the fact that not everyone drinks and gets drunk, students begin to realize they do not have to consume a belly full of beer to "fit in." In research I have done on campus, junior and senior students tell me that they "grow tired" of the keg party and find placing the focus on drinking to be boring. Almost all first-year students say the opposite, but by their third and fourth years, these students have recognized the correlation between drinking and other important aspects of their lives such as academic performance, social prowess, landing job interviews, etc.

Third, a colleague at The College of NJ, Larry Gage, Ph.D., posses the very interesting question, "What if there was an objective investigative "board" to look into incidents like those that occurred at LSU and MIT, much like the National Traffic Safety Board investigates air tragedies"? This is a very provocative and exciting proposition. What could we learn if the victims’ friends were interviewed about the situation? What could be learned from the collateral present at the event? What could come from an objective analysis of the environment in which the tragedy occurred? How did the confluence of agent (alcohol), environment (fraternity/party/game/dance/etc.), and host (the drinker) affect the out come?

Unfortunately we Americans tend to look at tragedy and ask, "who’s responsible"? rather than try to understand what happened so as to prevent it from happening again. The Onondaga Indians of Upstate NY used to make their decisions governing the tribe by asking what the law’s impact on the seventh generation. I wonder what would happen if we looked at the issue of collegiate drinking, listened to student perspectives, and initiated programs/policies based on their impact on the seventh generation?