Binge Drinking on College Campuses Research Paper

The Wechsler study showed that most of the students in these Greek houses were already heavy binge drinkers before leaving home: they drank heavily in high school. Dowdall asserts, that "prior high school drinking by itself is one of the most important predictors of freshman drinking" (58). Such an observation moves the sole focus of the national obsession with binge drinking's being a problem of higher education to its being a problem for the culture as a whole. It returns the gaze to the fundamental causes for a predisposition for binge drinking mentioned in the previous section. If the student was drinking before college, than the problem is not solely an effect of being at college. The problem lies just as much, if not more, with the parenting of the child. As Dowdall relates, "although there are many good reasons to focus on 'college drinking' as a national health problem [ . . .] we need to view early college drinking as embedded in the context of ongoing adolescent development" (43). Focus needs to turn toward successful parenting skills.

The second interesting result of the study is that it found a disconnect between student perception of peer drinking levels and their own. The Wechsler study found that students generally thought that other students on campus drank more than they did (Kellogg, 6). At a college:

Where the actual binge drinking rate was 43%, students indicated that their perception was that 69% of students participated in binge drinking. If students believe that "everyone else is binge drinking" than binge drinking rates are likely to rise because of the influence that "everyone else is drinking."

Whether it is accurate or not, the perceptions of drinking norms have a strong influence on current and future drinking behaviors and they eventually become self-full-filling prophecies.

(Kellogg, 6)

During the course of this study, a campaign was launched to change the perceptions of drinking levels on the campus. By realigning perception with actual statistics, the drinking levels on the campus fell 18%.

Such results suggest that despite genetic predispositions or inherent personality types, it is social environments -- whether they are familial or peer oriented -- which have the greatest effect on a student's drinking. As social perception can be more easily altered than physiognomy, the problem of college binge drinking becomes conquerable. Perceptions of drinking norms can be corrected through administrators' efforts; the result of such action is already documented to lower drinking levels. The habits of the institutions, such as fraternities and sororities, can be addressed and regulated by administrators to subdue excessive drinking. A student can be educated about the impact their choice of social groups can have on their personal health. Most fundamentally, people can be instructed in successful parenting skills, thereby lessening the predisposition of binge drinking caused by familial influence.

References

Blane, Howard T., & Chafetz, Morris E. (1979). Youth, Alcohol, and Social Policy. New York: Pelnum Press..

Boyd, Gayle M., Howard, Jan, & Zucker, Robert A. (Ed.) (1995). Alcohol…