Today is Thursday, so everyone is going out tonight, right?
Wrong.
Buried inside the recent flurry of campus-alcohol reports is the fact that most UW students drink responsibly. In fact, the vast majority of students will not go drinking tonight — “everybody” is not doing it.
Nevertheless, the perception persists that most UW students are lushes. And with some good cause: studies indicate that in the past two weeks, 36.7 percent of UW students drank in excess at least three times. Researchers classify 67 percent of UW students as “binge drinkers,” meaning we imbibe five or more drinks (four for girls) on a regular basis.
Such statistics only further the notion that “everybody is doing it” and foster social acceptance of excessive drinking.
Fortunately, the statistics are dangerously misleading. The very term “binge-drinking” is horribly flawed: Researchers define “binging” as only five drinks in a sitting. (A big beer on the Union terrace is the equivalent of four drinks.) Reading that two-thirds of students are “binge-drinkers” plays down the fact that most students drink responsibly or not at all. Half of UW drinkers never intend to get drunk
Nevertheless, the common perception on and off campus is that students are drunks. It is easy to understand why: from the moment freshmen arrive in Madison, they are deluged with campaigns based on scare tactics, “awareness weeks,” and educational information. But as a decade-worth of stagnant drinking statistics indicate, these campaigns serve only to encourage the idea that “everybody is doing it.”
UW is a willing accomplice in promoting students’ exaggerated misconceptions. UW administrators routinely advance the idea of extreme student drinking in its campaigns for increased regulations and alcohol-program funding. UW is so committed to fighting its alcohol “problem” that it is almost impossible for administrators to now suggest that “everybody isn’t doing it.”
This is unfortunate. In a federal study released earlier this week, a panel of alcohol experts strongly suggested that UW’s current approach to drinking is counter-effective. Rather, the experts suggested that administrators should focus on addressing student attitudes toward drinking — including lowering impressions about how many students drink. Such efforts, as part of a broad-based effort to provide drinking alternatives and limiting alcohol on campus, should be prioritized before banning drink specials or raising awareness of extreme alcohol abuse.
This week’s report is not the first to recommend so-called “social-norm marketing.” Social-norm campaigns operate on the logical premise that misconceptions and reality are highly correlated. As students’ misconceptions of alcohol abuse become more in tune with reality, actual drinking rates will drop. According to the Montana Social Norms Project, many campuses, including Northern Illinois University and the University of Arizona, have seen 18 to 21 percent reductions in alcohol abuse rates over two-year periods using campaigns that integrated social-normative themes. Such campaigns are cheap, effective and honest — unlike some of the ongoing scare tactics.
The latest studies on campus alcohol abuse suggest UW is incorrectly approaching the issue. Many of its efforts, especially increased regulations and the dysfunctional educational campaigns, should be abandoned. Such efforts will only encourage students to overestimate campus-drinking patterns, potentially resulting in more student alcohol abuse.
Some of what UW is doing is excellent, especially the chancellor’s and Robert Wood Johnson foundation’s efforts to foster alternatives to drinking. More resources should be placed in providing venues like the Terrace, which encourages both abstention and responsible drinking.
These efforts should be coupled with innovative campaigns aimed at changing students’ attitudes about alcohol use on campus. Embracing “social-norm campaigns” will require UW to abandon many of its ongoing pessimistic public campaigns.
Make no mistake: Alcohol abuse at UW is a problem and placing an optimistic spin on UW drinking won’t be easy. It begins with administrators admitting that everybody isn’t doing it.
Alexander Conant ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.
