Parental Notification Regarding Collegiate Drinking

There is an old custom when participating in a gathering, Russian I believe, of bringing an ingredient to be added to the stew...in rural America we did something similar and called it "pot luck." If I may, I would like to proffer a suggestion intended to spark the discussion of high-risk collegiate drinking, one that borrows from this old custom.

James Prochaska (P), a professor of psychology and researcher at the University of Rhode Island, wrote an article in "Health psychology" in 1994 (vol 13, No. 1, 47-51) that outlines findings from a study on the movement of individuals from a "precontemplative" or denial stage of readiness to change personal behavior to an "action" or roll up your sleeves and dig in stage of readiness to change. His findings were quite interesting and, as is so often the case, suggest that a very simple activity can yield profound results, in this case, regarding the movement of individuals in the direction of change. P reported that individuals moved, quite rapidly, from a state of denying the need to even consider changing to action intended to bring about change when they were able to increase their awareness of the benefits or "pros" likely to be realized if changing a particular behavior and the costs or "cons," equally likely to be realized, if the behavior in question was to continue.

What does this have to do with parental notification you ask?; good question. If the reason for having a policy on parental notification regarding student violations of established alcohol and other drug policies and procedures and/or intoxicated behavior is not so much to play "big brother" as it is to add additional and immediate, tangible "cons"equesnces to high-risk drinking, this may cast a different light on the discussion of the appropriateness of parental notification and incurring the expense of implementing such a policy - note, I type "may."

I agree that the business of Institutions of Higher Education (IHE's) is educating young adults and not regulating errant children, but are "tools" like parental notification necessarily a reactionary attempt by those in power to control those who are not? To take this question to an absurd extreme, why grade student work? why send those grades to student homes knowing that some parents will open the envelopes? why place a hold on student accounts or bill a student's parents for unpaid parking fines or other irresponsibility RE financial obligations? The list can go on and on.

The basic question is, what motivates an IHE's decision to do any of the things it does? If the answer is to treat students as young adults and hold them responsible for the consequences of the decisions they make, good as well as bad, then things like parental notification of policy violations or outrageous behavior may be consistent with that mission. If, on the other hand, the intent is to make students do what is right, i.e., "do things my way," then the decision is likely wrong.

Too often in our culture when debating the merits of a particular option, we seem to identify the two poles in the discussion and advocate for our preference by pointing out all that's wrong with the opposition. It is as if we were engaging in a "negative ad campaign" to influence the voters to go our way. We tend to dismiss options, often without fully exploring the potential they hold, generating more “heat than light” in the process.

Am I for notifying parents because I can't believe how arrogant or stupid students are and we must do something about this generation run amuck? absolutely not. Am I willing to consider parental notification as a vehicle to create an environment where students will be informed of the consequences of not pursuing responsible decision making about alcohol and the way such decisions infringe on the rights of the many who are exposed to the second-hand effects of high-risk drinking? I'm not sure yet, but believe this is worth discussing.

Just as there is no “silver bullet” that will slay the werewolf of high-risk student drinking, there should also not be an out-of-hand dismissal of new ideas that come up for discussion in addressing high-risk drinking behaviors in IHE. At the least, we need to realize that just as the poison-dart drug curare, used by certain South American tribes to hunt monkeys, is lethal at certain doses it is also a boon to medicine when used appropriately to treat certain medical conditions. To extend this metaphor to parental notification, there may be "degrees" of appropriateness for issues as apparently dangerous as "notifying parents" of the behavior of their young adults in a free society

As with so many issues that are open for debate in our culture, there seems to be a rush to serve the twin gods of "quick fix" and "public approval" as regards high-risk drinking in higher ed. Unfortunately an issue like parental notification is not likely to yield to the former and too volatile to produce the later...the classic 'lose - lose' situation? My hunch is that the solution resides in how we, in higher education, choose to frame the question. If we (IHE's) are looking for another arrow to put in the quiver of the sentries defending the walls of the castle from the marauding Huns, then I believe that parental notification is a mistake. Such an approach reminds me of what my grandfather used to say, "Never teach a pig to sing. It only serves to frustrate you and annoys the pig to no end." I do not believe we will ever be able to "make" students do what we want them/think they should do, and a case can be made that such efforts only add resolve to the students' determination to assert their independence.

On the other hand, to avail ourselves of the right to notify parents as provided by recent legislative changes in Washington is to employ the tool to accentuate the "pro" reasons for moderating one's drinking behavior and "con" reason associated with continuing high-risk consumption. This, to me, is a very exciting change. I am a big fan of James Prochaska's model of change as alluded to above, and his research on how to motivate individuals to move through the early stages from a 'precontemplation' to 'action' stage of readiness to change is exciting. We know that this change already happens on its own, without our intervention, something reported in the literature as the “maturing-out” phenomenon. The challenge then is to "speed-up" this process. Prochaska suggests that this can be done by creating opportunities for individuals to come face-to-face with the consequences of change. Our job, as I see it, is to facilitate this student awareness, which is consistent with the mission of most IHE's, and thereby increase the likelihood that these individual students will alter the choices they make regarding drinking.

The confluence of the social marketing strategies of Wes Perkins and Michael Haines COUPLED WITH innovative environmental strategies—both of which are tempered by the creative efforts of all individuals committed to affecting student behavior—WILL make a difference. The biggest hurdle we have to clear, however, is to bring those in a position to make things happen in higher ed, for example, "upper administration," Boards of Trustees/Regents, parents, and alumni, up to speed. We cannot legislate a solution to the problem of alcohol abuse, however, there is an important role that rules and policies can and must play in affecting the campus culture. This role will be the incentives of positive and negative reinforcement associated with INDIVIDUAL STUDENT CHOICES regarding drinking behavior that will make the change a reality.

I reiterate my belief that we will not be successful if we continue to search for the "quick fix" or "magic bullet" that will solve the problem of alcohol abuse in higher ed. Our students come to us with firmly established perceptions of alcohol as a substance and drinking as a behavior. They have expectations, often born of rumor and myth, that influence the choices they make, especially in their early weeks of introduction to collegiate life. We already know about the "maturing out" phenomenon. Our job is to hasten this process of change. I believe that parental notification and other pre-emptive steps can be helpful, but they will not be solutions in and of themselves.

In closing, please indulge me as I share another analogy. Most good generals are soldiers first and officers second. They have learned by doing and value the insight of those who continue "to do" in the field even when they are back in the military headquarters planning strategy. What the "generals" of higher education need to do is consider the counsel of the "soldiers" who are in the trenches fighting the battle. We know that what higher ed has done for 30 years to affect student drinking has not worked, in fact, it can be argued that the historical "scare 'em to death" approaches to AOD education have made matters worse rather than better. We need to rethink our approach to affecting the decisions students make regarding alcohol. We need to have the courage to cut our losses, stop spending millions on "awareness campaigns" as the exclusive approach to AOD programming and focus on using what works rather than what we think "should" work—or works to change the behavior of middle age administrators, and I speak as one of those middle age educators.