Choose Responsibility

The New York Times reported on August 4th that two Rider University officials and three fraternity members were charged with aggravated hazing in the March death of a freshmen fraternity pledge. Gary DeVercelly, an 18 year-old freshman from Long Beach, CA, died on March 30 after a night of drinking as part of a fraternity initiation ritual.  When DeVercelly died, his Blood Alcohol Content was 0.426–a level at which an individual will be completely unconscious, have depressed reflexes, impaired respiratory and circulatory function, and will be near death.  He had consumed more than half of a bottle of flavored vodka along with his fraternity brothers.

This tragic case represents the first time that university employees have been charged directly in an alcohol related incident.  Neither the dean of students or Greek life coordinator were present at the fraternity house on March 30 nor were they directly responsible for providing the alcohol that was served at the party.  The three students charged, who are all over 21, were present at the party that led to DeVercelly’s death.

A humorous article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education presents a new approach for getting at the impervious problem of collegiate binge drinking:

“Tame attempts to address the problem — alcohol-counseling meetings, intensified training of resident counselors, and SWAT-team sweeps through the dorms — clearly have failed to deal with this intractable problem.

“We are encouraged, then, by news of efforts to think outside the box, to implement radical solutions to a radical problem. Leading the way is tiny Lucifer College in Minnesota. As Lucifer’s dean told us, “What we need to do is to make binge drinking unfashionable. And there’s one foolproof way to do that: We have to get the faculty involved.”

“To wit, this year Lucifer will begin sending faculty members into dorms to bartend beer bashes, while students will be invited to faculty cocktail parties, where they will be encouraged to drink in the company of their professors. Preliminary studies suggest that the sight of doddering septuagenarians with gin blossoms on their nostrils, sloshing martinis on their bow ties and tweed jackets while holding forth about Cicero, can reduce student consumption of alcohol dramatically.”

The article, which was written by two Amherst College professors, goes on to describe a campus culture where courses on alcohol are incorporated across the curriculum, where professors attend students parties, and where binge drinking has become so unpopular that the bars in town have been forced to stop serving beer.

While farcical, some lessons may be learned from this account of fictional Lucifer College. At many colleges and universities, faculty members are barred from gatherings with students–even those older than 21–involving alcohol. Where professors were once able to interact with students socially and model responsible behavior around alcohol at departmental and course-related functions, this type is interaction has effectively ceased. It has been replaced by a campus culture marked by a disconnect between faculty and students and a general wariness on the part of faculty to interact in student life outside the classroom. Students confine their drinking–more intense now than it was two or three decades ago–to dorm rooms, frat houses, and off-campus parties.

The argument for an 18 year-old drinking age is beginning to spread. Choose Responsibility was featured in the student newspaper Indiana University. Promisingly, the chief of campus police Jerry Minger was quoted as saying “I am not a big advocate of anything that would create more drinking, but I applaud the fact that (the proposal) has (alcohol) education built in.”

While we would question whether this would actually create any more binge drinking than is actually occurring, we believe that the when looking at the full proposal, the benefits outweigh the possible detriments.

While the Indiana Article is in hard copy, look forward to two more articles in the Vermont Cynic and the Daily Free Press of Boston University later this week.

If you see other recent news articles let us know!

As of today, Choose Responsibility’s full website is up and functioning. Check it out! We hope it will be your go-to place for information on the drinking age and alcohol use in America.

Contact Scott or me if you have any questions, would like more information about [CR], or are looking for a way to get involved.

This past week the Columbia University’s Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse (CASA), headed by the former Secretary of Health Joseph Califano Jr., released a report on the state of alcohol and drug use on the college level. The full, text can be found here. Though this is not the first CASA report on the subject of college student substance abuse, it does appear, at least by first glance, to be more broadly accepted as legitimate scholarship in the field. The previous study released by CASA caught the attention of several major scholars and media outlets cooking its statistics to inflate the crisis of college drinking. Here’s a brief review of that criticism.

In my initial read of the CASA report titled, Wasting the Best and Brightest, I had very little trouble with their statistics. They are, in short, expected and not substantially different from other sources. In short, CASA reports that close to 50% of college students report abusing alcohol (binge drinking), illicit drugs, or prescription drugs. Previous research (2001) say binge drinking levels are about 40%. The way CASA compiles the all rates of abuse into one figure it is easy to mistake that figure for 25% increase in the rate of binge drinking (from 40 to 50 percent) in the past 5 years. That is definitely not the case. However, I do find it difficult to believe that 10% of the college population abuses illicit or prescription drugs but are not guilty of binge drinking. It’s possible, but rather unlikely. The take away point of all of this? The headlining statistic of their report, may not be as high as they report. It’s not the end of the world but if someone has the time it is definitely worth investigating in greater detail.

The other striking thing about the CASA report is the disconnect between the report itself and the accompanying statement by its director Joe Califano. The report proper is written well, and reflects the staid discussion of findings and recommendations that is expected from a college-funded study. That language is sharply contrasted by the rhetoric of Califano’s opening statement. “Too many [college presidents, deans, and trustees] assume a Pontius Pilate posture, leaving the problem in the hands of the students.” How that caustic attack on college administrators is supposed to solve the problem of abuse on college campuses is lost on this reader. The comparison is foolish, if not impudent.

The government made available this week new figures from the National Survey on Drug Use for 2004-2005. This survey contains the most recent alcohol use and abuse numbers, that serve as a reminder of drinking practices around the country. Before assessing what the minute shifts may mean, let’s recap some of the pertinent statistics:

For “Minors”:

• Alcohol use decreased slightly among youths aged 12 to 17 from 17.7 percent in 2003-2004 to 17.1 percent in 2004-2005.
• In 2005, about 10.8 million persons aged 12 to 20 (28.2 percent of this age group) reported drinking alcohol in the past month. Nearly 7.2 million (18.8 percent) were binge drinkers, and 2.3 million (6.0 percent) were heavy drinkers. These figures have remained essentially the same since the 2002 survey

For Young adults:

· Young adults aged 18 to 22 enrolled full time in college were more likely than their peers not enrolled full time (i.e., part-time college students and persons not currently enrolled in college) to use alcohol in the past month (64.4 v. 53.2), binge drink (44.8 v. 38.3), and drink heavily (19.5 v. 13.).

· The pattern of higher rates of current alcohol use, binge alcohol use, and heavy alcohol use among full-time college students than the rates for others aged 18 to 22 has remained consistent since 2002

For Drunken Driving:

· In 2005, an estimated 13.0 percent of persons aged 12 or older drove under the influence of alcohol at least once in the past year

· This percentage has dropped since 2002, when it was 14.2 percent.

So what does all this, and the rest of the NSDUH data, mean?
First and foremost, binge drinking and heavy drinking slightly increased or did not change. While drinking rates (once in the past month) declined slightly across the board, the more concerning figures (binge drinking and heavy drinking) did not. These figures are an extension of a previous identified movement to the extremes in drinking behavior across the country. This means that increasingly large numbers of people are abstaining from alcohol altogether, just as there is an increase in the rates of heavy drinking. While the effects of this shift (from bell curve to barbell) are less apparent in older age groups where there are significant numbers of moderate drinkers, the same cannot be said for young adults. The polarization of drinking behaviors are quite apparent and appalling on college campuses. This recent blog post on ProgressiveU shows the opinion that most students share regarding college drinking behavior.

A second finding, also pertinent to the previous discussion, is the data suggesting a growing divide in the behaviors of college students relative to their non-college attending peers. While heavy drinking continues to increase amongst college students, the rates in their non-student peers is both lower and steady (See the Graph). Why these differences exist are quite interesting but are not particularly well understood. However, to treat someone as immature, only allows them the justification to act immature. If this holds as an explanation for the differences in consumption behaviors between students and non-student young adults, then it should apply more generally to the differences between America’s infantilized youth under the 21 year-old drinking age relative to the drinking behaviors of young adults across the world.

“‘It’s not shocking enough (to keep students from drinking again), but it’s definitely a different kind of experience,’ Short said,” after the freshman at the University of Georgia spent a night in jail for underage drinking. Recent news out of the University of Georgia show that arrests for underage drinking did not decrease this past year following the communities tougher alcohol policies. While administrators of Georgia’s largest university have sought to curtail their image as a party school—famous for the “world’s largest cocktail party”— their policies of stricter enforcement and tougher penalties have had little effect. The idea behind the administration’s push was that if penalties were harsh enough freshman, sophomores, and juniors at UGA would warm up to the fact that for them alcohol is illegal, and that this would make them stop drinking. It failed. This should come as no surprise. When as few as 2 out of every 1000 underage drinkers are ever punished, even large increases in enforcement cannot provide sufficient deterrence for those illegal behaviors. Administrators of the university ought to reassess their draconian policies, because ultimately they only push behavior farther off campus and deeper underground. And while this “out of sight out of mind” mentality is pleasing to the eye, it can do little to improve the drinking culture on campus. Sadly, when it comes to irresponsible drinking it may only be making things worse.