Changes on College Campuses Aimed at Curbing Binge Drinking
Binge Drinking on College Campuses in Virginia
Ryan Smith of Virginia Tech’s Center for Applied Behavior Systems, who is studying alcohol consumption by college students, has seen the downside of binge drinking. Smith and his colleagues give 400 breathalyzer tests every Thursday night and says more than 60% of their tests show people with over .08 blood alcohol content (BAC), the legal DUI limit. More important to Smith is their findings of 15% of the breathalyzer tests that are over .20 BAC which is more than twice the legal limit. Jeff Levy, a father who’s son was killed by a drunk driver – a drunk college student who had been binge drinking and then got behind the wheel – speaks at forum on binge drinking sponsored by the Fairfax County Police Department. He says parents need to be aware of the binge drinking and that they should be stricter about not allowing underage kids to drink.
Hard Liquor Banned on Colby College Campus
Colby College will join nearby Bowdoin College and Bates College in Waterville, Maine, in banning hard alcohol from parties on campus and in dorms. The goal is to reduce the number of alcohol poisoning episodes on campus that result in a trip to the local emergency room. Jim Terhune, the Dean of Students, believe this measure will help eliminate dangerous drinking patterns that have led to students being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. Unfortunately many students don’t understand why Colby College is making the change and they feel drinking is an integral part of the college experience. Some students say that their peers who don’t like the taste of beer will just binge drink in their rooms before going out for the night.
LessThanUThink Campaign Targets Students Reputation
Set to launch on September 2, 2011, the LessThanUThink campaign, which is a student-led anti-binge drinking campaign at The University of Alabama, will take a new approach to creating awareness of binge drinking. Amanda Coppock, the media relations coordinator for LessThanUThink, says their campaign focuses on the students who make fools of themselves by binge drinking and how others don’t want to be among them. The campaign doesn’t aim to educate students about binge drinking with boring facts about binge drinking because their research found students aren’t receptive to being told what not to do. Instead they use phrases like “You thought you could dance, and you could… three drinks ago.” The LessThanUThink campaign is using the ways students embarrass themselves in public and their concern about how they are perceived by their peers.
Students of the College of Communications and Information Sciences created and submitted the project to the 2009 American Advertising Federation National Student Advertising Competition where the project placed second in the competition and was awarded a $75,000 grant from the Century Council, an organization of distillers, which fights to eliminate drunk driving and underage on college campuses. The $75,000 will be used to implement the program and then analyze the effectiveness of the campaign. If LessThanUThink works in Tuscaloosa, the Century Council may choose to implement the program on college campuses nationwide.
