DRINKING ON CAMPUS

The findings of a new National Institutes of Health report on alcohol use among college students are at once unsurprising and shocking. Everyone knew the use was substantial; few could have guessed the results were so devastating.

The report, “A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at U.S. Colleges,” is the first study to connect the extent of alcohol use on campus to the health and safety consequences. The extent is a mixed bag – the number of students who do not drink at all is rising gradually, but the number of students who drink in binges is rising sharply. The consequences are 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, 70,000 incidents of rape, 400,000 occurrences of unprotected sex and 600,000 assaults.

Binge drinking, the report found, is heaviest among white male students at four-year institutions, markedly lower at historically black institutions, community colleges and among students who live at home. Much of the drinking centers on fraternities and athletic events. It begins earlier in the week – the Saturday night bash now often begins on Thursday – and is most prevalent among underclassmen.

Clearly, this is a significant public-health problem. Yet, a nation that goes into a frenzied, spare-no-expense mobilization over a handful of disease-carrying mosquitoes cannot get past an old mindset that considers excessive, damaging drinking that could be unacceptable in any other neighborhood as an inevitable part of the campus scene and the inevitable tragedies – such as the stabbing death of a Bates College student last month – as isolated incidents.

Even the best intentions fall victim to this laissez-faire attitude. It has been nearly three years since Gov. King called upon all 30 Maine college presidents to join a concerted effort to quell binge drinking. The UMaine system, Maine Maritime, the technical colleges and a few others have joined this effort; elsewhere progress is painfully slow.

According to the report, the strategies that reduce student drinking are no mystery: Tougher enforcement of drinking-age laws on campus; increased police patrols of both on- and off-campus residential areas; vigorous prosecution of vandalism and assault; providing students, especially incoming freshmen, with information on the impact excessive drinking can have upon their health, their academic success and their lives. What works is known. This report gives colleges all the reasons they need to get to work.