Check out Tyler O’Neil’s article in the Register and let us know what you think in the comments.

“If anyone wants to effectively combat the problem of binge drinking, humiliation is not the way to go…Saying that underage drinking is illegal and binge drinking is dangerous does not make the problem go away, in the same way that humiliating someone who is binge drinking will not make that person stop.

Simply telling people who have a hangover that they should be ashamed of themselves is not effective; treating the source of the problem is. How many partying college kids even know that what they’re doing is considered ‘binge drinking?’ Setting a realistic threshold, and making sure people are aware of what they are doing, may help kids keep their drinking totals down. Letting kids know that drinking to solve other problems is not appropriate or effective is better than shaming them into changing.”

Which types of these advertisements do you think are the most effective? Let us know in the comments.

Stories this week…

On Monday, The Partnership for a Drug-Free America released some discouraging new statistics: between 2008 and 2009, rates of past-month alcohol use among high school students increased by 11%. “I’m a little worried that we may be seeing the leading edge of a trend here,” said Sean Clarkin, the organization’s Director of Strategy.

In the past few months, we’ve received several reports of increasing alcohol-related hospitalizations on college campuses. We can now add Harvard to the list, thanks to a story in Monday’s edition of The Crimson. According to predictions by Harvard’s Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services, the number of students seeking treatment will reach 200 by the end of the term, “a 43 percent increase in the past two years, marking an upward trend after a period of stabilization from 2005 to 2008.”

The Iowa City Council is considering a new ordinance that would make 21 the legal age of entry into local bars. According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The University of Iowa supports the proposed change, but the editors of the Daily Iowan aren’t convinced. They wrote, “Raising the age of bar patrons wouldn’t address the root problem with downtown Iowa City: overconsumption, a factor not entirely congruent with age.” What do you think is the proper solution?

In other news:

A new study that will be published in the Journal of Marketing Research found that in some cases, anti-binge drinking public service advertisements which use guilt and shame to affect viewers may backfire and actually increase binge drinking. Check out Advertising Age for more details.

The editors of The Spectator at Seattle University endorsed a recent medical amnesty proposal put forth by their student government. They wrote that this new policy could be a small part of a much larger solution to the problem of toxic drinking:

“While there can be plenty of arguments made both for and against the Good Samaritan policy, it is important to recognize the overlying problem: an abundance of not only underage drinking, but drinking to the point of dangerous intoxication on college campuses. The Good Samaritan policy is not the end-all solution to this prevailing problem; rather it is only a step in the right direction toward decreasing this dangerous behavior.”

What do you think of this proposed change?

New York Times “Motherlode” blogger Lisa Belkin picked up the recent Washington Post story on parental notification policies at colleges and asked her readers to weigh in on the issue. Check out her post and leave some feedback.

Remember: cast your vote on Change.org if you haven’t done so already, and leave us a tip in the comments if we missed something in this week’s update.

This week, we learned via the US News “Paper Trail” blog and the Daily Collegian that these pleas went largely unheeded, and the weekend saw a record number of arrests:

“The Daily Collegian reports that 160 partyers were arrested this past weekend. That’s more arrests than were made during the previous two State Patty’s Day weekends combined. Must have been a big weekend in State College.

‘The trend seems to be going the wrong way,’ State College Police Capt. Dana Leonard tells the Daily Collegian. ‘Everything is upward trending in the past three years–calls are up, alcohol overdoses are double. It’s a disturbing three-year trend.’”

Do students on your campus host similar unofficial holiday events that are characterized by heavy drinking? Let us know in the comments.

“The excessive nature of college drinking is normalized into our culture and has turned into something we don’t even question anymore. When we guzzle down drink after drink, we are inducing memory loss and we are putting ourselves, our health, our relationships, even our lives at risk! Yet, every weekend, we start again, just waiting to see who blacks out next—immune to the consequences.”

Does her account match up with your experience on your campus or in your community? Let us know in the comments.

Stories this week:

Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post examined recent changes in parental notification rules for underage alcohol violations at colleges at universities across the country. Jameson wrote, “Schools have found themselves in a delicate balancing act. Officials want to protect students’ heath and honor parents’ demands for information, but they also want to help students develop a sense of independence.” What do you think is the appropriate policy?

Two Dallas Morning News articles caught our eye this week. The first came from local high school student Kelsey McKinney, who took a snapshot of the toxic drinking culture in her area and concluded that a lower drinking age is necessary. The second was a roundtable discussion involving the members of the Morning News editorial board, who debated this week’s Washington Post parental notification story. Debate moderator and Assistant Editorial Page Editor Nicole Stockdale argued for a lower drinking age: “My first problem is that the drinking age should already be 18. Treat adults like adults.”

In case you missed it earlier this week, check out the Associated Press report on a disturbing trend at Midwestern colleges: drinkers create “shot books” to commemorate their 21^st birthdays, with one shot for each year represented.

In other news…

Legislators in Utah are considering a partial medical amnesty bill for underage drinkers who seek emergency assistance for intoxicated friends. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the bill is intended to prevent situations similar to the one in which Utah State University first-year Michael Starks passed away after a night of heavy drinking in 2009.

A panel of student affairs administrators at New Hampshire universities discussed the issue of underage drinking in higher education on New Hampshire Public Radio. You can listen to the conversation here.

BC Heights columnist Joseph Pasquinelli took on the issue of the drinking age again this week. He wrote, “The current drinking age makes using alcohol illegal for most college-age students, but this does not stop them. It will only make their behavior more secretive and irresponsible. In order to foster an environment where this ‘experimenting’ can be done responsibly and treated as an opportunity to learn how to drink like an adult, the drinking age needs to be lowered to at most 18.”

Leave us a news tip in the comments if you found an interesting item that we missed, and please remember to cast your votes for our Change.org idea on Monday afternoon!

“Shot books are made by and for women almost exclusively, especially in sororities, according to Sher and other experts. The keepsakes come bedecked with photos, drink names, bar locales and progressively sloppier signatures – visual reminders of a night of excess few could recall on their own.”

Check out the report in the Washington Post for more details. Alcohol-related deaths among U.S. college students are rising, and it’s clear that this ritual poses a threat to the health and safety of young adults. So we’d like to hear from you: are these shot books popular on your campus or in your community? Let us know in the comments.

McKinney spared few details in her column, and she cast the reality of alcohol in blunt terms:

“The current drinking age is not stopping underage drinking; it is simply causing it to become more secretive.

In that secret lies danger. Students treat drinking as a recreational activity instead of giving it the respect it deserves. Because they are unable to drink out in the open, they find ways to do it illegally – be that at parties or with fake identification.

Today’s young people, as a result of their underground drinking habits, have no idea how to consume alcohol with tolerance or wisdom. They have been taught to down as many drinks as they can in as short amount of time as possible.”

Check out the rest of her column and let us know what you think in the comments.

Stories this week:

Malcolm Gladwell published a long piece on the sociology of alcohol and cultural contexts in the latest issue of The New Yorker (subscription required). He found our society’s unwillingness to engage in realistic alcohol education problematic. In the conclusion, he wrote:

“There is something about the cultural dimension of social problems that eludes us. When confronted with the rowdy youth in the bar, we are happy to raise his drinking age, to tax his beer, to punish him if he drives under the influence, and to push him into treatment if his habit becomes an addiction. But we are reluctant to provide him with a positive and constructive example of how to drink. The consequences of the failure are considerable, because, in the end, culture is a more powerful tool in dealing with drinking than medicine, economics, or the law.”

Alyssa Rosenberg concurred with Gladwell’s observation in a follow-up post at The Atlantic on Thursday, and connected his points to the problem of our inconsistent age of majority:

“Drinking is supposed to be one of the signifiers of adulthood, it’s one of the legal demarcations of full majority.  Even if almost everyone drinks before they’re legally 21, I tend to think having truly figured out drinking is one of the demarcations of being grown up.  And yet unlike voting, where you can register, and think about who you support, and march off to the voting booth, or driving, where you’re licensed by the state, there’s rarely a threshold act or a genuine training process for learning how to drink.”

What are your thoughts on this article? Let us know in the comments.

Administrators at Yale have noticed a spike in alcohol-related hospital admissions this year, and an investigation into those problems led two Yale Daily News reporters to ask, “Does Yale Have a Drinking Problem?”

In other news…

Two articles in The Heights at Boston College caught our attention this week. Special Project Editor Ana Lopez surveyed the history of the college’s alcohol policies, noting that after Legal Age 21 took hold, the college experienced some new problems: “BC’s effective dry status pushed hundreds of students into surrounding neighborhoods on weekend nights. The presence of rambunctious, and now underage, coeds in the neighborhoods began to strain the community’s already precarious relations with the University.” Later in the week, columnist Joseph Pasquinelli indicated that these types of problems persist on campus today.

Student health professionals at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse have created a YouTube contest to encourage responsible drinking on campus. Check out The Racquet for more details about how this contest will fit into the larger anti-binge drinking initiative at La Crosse.

Did we miss something this week? Leave us a news tip in the comments.

His answer to this persistent problem is fairly simple: change the drinking age. “If drinking were not illegal or a violation of policy for those under 21, there would be less instances of students becoming sick and behaving irresponsibly while under the influence. If drinking were legal, we could teach people from a younger age how to drink in a manner that is safe and mature…getting slammed out of one’s mind loses its appeal when it is not against policy to have a drink or two to end the day.”

He concludes his column with a call to action for students that implores them to take matters into their own hands by encouraging responsible behavior. Check out the rest of the column and let us know what you think in the comments.