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College Binge Drinking Tags

Community-Based Programs Help Curb College Binge Drinking

As college drinking continues to be a growing problem, solutions are being examined in a variety of program possibilities to determine the best way to bring the college experience back to the academic side. Not one of these programs suggest that they can curb off-campus drinking altogether, but do prove to be successful in reducing binge drinking episodes.

Science Daily recently reported on the findings of researchers that involved an alcohol control program at Western Washington University and the surrounding community. This program included increased police patrols in neighborhoods that tend to have loud and sometimes dangerous college parties.

Efforts also focused on activities that would make off-campus students better neighborhood residents. The combination of these activities helped to lower student binge drinking episodes.

Robert F. Saltz, Ph.D., of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, CA. and lead researcher, suggests that these findings highlight the importance of college-community cooperation in fighting against problem drinking.

"If you want to reach students living in the community, you need to work with city agencies and neighborhood associations," said Saltz in Science Daily. Such broad-level efforts also "get the students to understand that they aren't living in a bubble and are part of a community with norms and expectations about alcohol use and acceptable behavior," Saltz says.

Community-level programs have been identified as just one way that officials can help to curb drinking problems. Other studies have shown that projects that screen and counsel specific individuals for drinking problems or that target specific groups of students to prevent risky drinking.

"What we're all trying to figure out," Saltz noted, "is how to optimally blend all of these efforts to better protect the students' health and safety."