Impaired judgement

Part 3 - Changing attitudes

by Jason Gay

Of course, a strong reaction to the Scott Krueger tragedy was to be expected. His death was a cruel but important reminder of college drinking's hazardous side. Wisely, many institutions, in Boston and beyond, revisited their own alcohol policies and prevention programs.

But is college drinking worse than ever, as the recent hype might lead you to believe? No.

Overall beer, wine, and liquor consumption in America has declined over the past decade and a half; college drinking has mirrored that downward trend. A 1993 survey of 300,000 college students, conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles, found that average consumption for students who drink regularly had dropped to 13 drinks per week, down from 14.3 in 1982. Student who described themselves as light or moderate drinkers saw their average consumption dip to six drinks per week, down from 8.4.

The survey also found that a growing number of students barely drink at all. Nearly half the students surveyed abstained from even the occasional beer. In 1971, only one in four students did not drink, UCLA reported.

Walking around a Boston-area college on a Friday night, it can be hard to imagine that anyone is abstaining from alcohol. But even the police agree that the situation is not as bad as has been recently portrayed.

"It's actually gone down," says Boston Police Department spokesperson Margot Hill, a former Boston University campus cop. "Although high-profile incidents [like Krueger's death] make us think that the world is out of control, and drinking is out of control, it actually used to be much worse."

So what's changed? In a word, tolerance. Society is becoming less forgiving about drinking, especially abusive drinking (see "Is America in the Midst of Another Temperance Movement"). We've raised minimum drinking ages, put warnings on labels, instituted advertising bans. We better understand the potential dangers. Given what we know today about alcohol -- and given the damage that's already been done -- we're much less likely to excuse reckless behavior, even by college students.

Students, too, are less patient with alcohol abusers. They're getting sick of disturbances from noisy parties and obnoxious neighbors. They're tired of reading in the papers about arrested or injured classmates and alcohol-related campus crimes such as date rape.

Unfortunately, officials too often want to wipe the problem away by imposing restraints such as alcohol bans. This is a mistake. Cellucci's zero-tolerance push for state colleges may be politically correct, but it's a rash and unenforceable idea for a state college system with tens of thousands of students who are hardly going to quit drinking en masse. (More than 92 percent of UMass/Amherst students voted against the ban two weeks ago.)

"The quick and easy remedies do not work," says Dwight Heath, a Brown University anthropology professor who has studied the way various world cultures use alcohol. "After an incident, there is a flurry of ooohs and aaahs and some committee wants to ban parties and draw a dry radius around campus . . . but there cannot be any worse approach to drinking among adolescents than `Just say no.' "

A 1990 Carnegie Foundation report found that when universities place more stringent regulations on drinking, those regulations are "not likely" to have the desired effects. Sometimes, students can become extremely unruly when institutions initiate strong crackdowns.

Last May, students at the University at Colorado at Boulder rioted after months of simmering tensions with city police over college drinking enforcement. More than 1500 people were involved in the melee. Similar riots occurred this fall at Colorado State, Michigan State, and the University of New Hampshire, where hundreds of students erupted in anger -- chanting "Pigs, USA, and UNH" -- after police tried to break up an off-campus party. Police were forced to use pepper spray and a police dog to disperse the crowd.

"If you go too far, you'll get a backlash," says David Musto, a professor of the history of medicine at Yale University who has examined American anti-alcohol movements.

To be sure, most campuses won't react violently to campus drinking crackdowns. But too often, strict rules drive student drinking deeper underground, into clandestine, unmonitored settings like dorm rooms, house parties, and fraternity basements. This is where abuse is most common -- where the goal often becomes to drink as much as possible in the shortest amount of time.

And that's when students are most at risk.

Sam, a 20-year-old junior at Tufts University, in Medford, was drinking illegally in a small group this fall when one of his friends drank too much too quickly and passed out. The friend started to vomit while lying on the ground, a clear sign of alcohol poisoning.

Though he was scared, Sam didn't think twice about calling the university's emergency number and having his friend taken to the infirmary, where he was stabilized.

But Sam admits that if there had been a zero-tolerance policy on campus, he might have hesitated to seek help.

"Bans are bad ideas," he says flatly. "Sure, they might cut down on frat parties, but it's not going to stop people from drinking. And if someone gets into the position where they should go to the hospital, I think that will make them less willing to do it. They'll be more worried about getting into trouble than about their health."

Back to part 2 - On to part 4

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.