OPINION & EDITORIAL
PACE’s goals miss the mark
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- Eat free pizza, save house parties (October 16, 2002)
- Support ALRC recommendations to create a healthier campus environment (April 18, 2002)
by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Thursday, September 5, 2002
Nearly $500,000 was put in the pockets of the University of Wisconsin Policy Alternatives Community Education Coalition Wednesday to combat high-risk drinking on campus.
Formerly known as the Robert Wood Johnson Project, the group spends its time and money studying alcohol consumption at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in addition to nine other universities across the country.
For the past six years, using research done on UW students’ drinking habits, the group has been lobbying the city and university to limit downtown drink specials and support late-night, alcohol-free events. Yet, according to statistics by the Harvard College Alcohol Study, the number of students who said they binged remained the same through the duration of the group’s first grant.
In other words, it has been a lot of talk, but little action.
At the other universities, which include Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado-Boulder, numerous projects and plans have been implemented to provide students more entertainment options, educate students on the dangers of drinking too much and help students realize that not all college students binge-drink.
For example, at Georgia Tech, there are programs such as “Get a Buzz,” which offers funds to student organizations offering to host alcohol-free events. At other schools, panels consisting of students, faculty and community leaders exist to work on alcohol policy as well as provide education to students about the dangers of high-risk drinking.
At UW, PACE has outlined four major goals as part of the new grant: limiting late-night drink specials, parental notification, educating students on the dangers of house parties and clarifying university policies and expectations of student conduct.
First, the current fight to ban drink specials downtown is a futile one and should be dropped. Students are going to drink regardless of the existence of drink specials. The money and energy of the group can be better used elsewhere.
Second, parental notification is a clear invasion of students’ privacy and should not be at all enacted.
We have all had nights and made mistakes we do not want our parents to know about. We have that right to decide if we want to tell our parents or not; the university should not be deciding for us. Besides, part of coming to college is learning how to be an adult, and that means learning to take responsibility for one’s actions. To notify parents right away deprives students of the opportunity to do just that.
The final two initiatives are welcome starts, but have no long-term potential. Educating students through pamphlets and other materials on how to have safe house parties can help reduce the number of injuries that often occur from parties that get out of control.
Clarifying the expectations of student conduct is fine, but it creates an ineffective parent-child role and pits UW officials and police directly against students. We hear you, but it won’t necessarily change how we act.
Alone, these initiatives cannot solve the problem.
Instead, PACE should see this new grant as a clean canvas. RWJ had become an acronym with negative connotations to students. A new name gives the group a somewhat fresh start; they need to follow through with an altered game plan.
The policies enacted at the other universities are a good example of what needs to start happening at UW in order to reduce high-risk drinking. PACE needs to start producing results. The group now needs to not only use the information gathered from the first grant, but take advantage of their peers’ work and begin to create programs that provide additional funding for late-night programs, that provide more education on binge-drinking, and that begin to work toward changing the idea that everyone drinks at UW.
