A Harvard University report published yesterday finds that, despite efforts on the part of colleges to reduce heavy drinking, the percentage of college students across the country engaging in binge drinking remains the same as it was eight years ago.
Officials at the University, while largely rejecting the usefulness of the binge drinking statistic, maintained that the incidence of dangerous drinking at the University has decreased in recent years.
The study, conducted by Harvard University Professor Henry Wechsler, found that 44 percent of college students between the ages of 18 and 23 had engaged in binge drinking -t defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row for men, and four in a row for women - within two weeks of taking the study. That is the same percentage the study found in 1993.
Wechsler "has been a sort of bulldog in forcing people to see the worst of what is out there," University President John T. Casteen III said.
More students are abstaining from drinking and more students are exposed to information about alcohol abuse, the study found. More college students also are living in substance-free dormitories.
Nonetheless, the same numbers of students are binge drinking, calling into question the effectiveness of college programs to combat alcohol abuse.
The University, however, has done a better job of addressing drinking problems than many other universities, Casteen said.
"Our remedies have probably been more rigorous and more effective than some remedies elsewhere have been," he said.
The University's Center for Alcohol and Substance Education and the Student Health Center don't consider the binge drinking statistic to be a useful way of measuring student drinking problems, student health officials said.
The binge drinking statistic is misleading because the definition of dangerous drinking can differ among people and situations, said Jennifer Bauerle, social norms marketing coordinator for Student Health.
Binge drinking statistics can lead people to think that drinking problems are more serious than they really are, Bauerle said.
"We believe many University students are making responsible choices," she added.
Moreover, Student Health's concern is not just how much students are drinking but also whether students' drinking negatively affects their lives.
"The most important thing to us is that our students are healthy and safe," she added.
According to the Health Promotion Survey, an online survey Student Health's Office of Health Promotion conducts, the number of drinks students say they consume per week has declined since the study started in 1999. In 2002, the average University student reportedly consumed 3.6 alcoholic beverages a week.
The number of drinks first years report drinking has dropped from a high of 6.9 in 2000 to 3.4 in 2002.
The declines in drinking have been even more dramatic within the Greek system.
Fraternity members reported drinking 6.4 drinks per week in 2002, down from 18.8 in 2001. Sorority members reported consuming 4.4 drinks per week, down from 7.6 last year.
Fraternities also have taken steps to reduce serving alcohol to underage students and to students who are already intoxicated, said Aaron Laushway, asst. dean of fraternity and sorority life.
"Fewer students are consuming alcohol dangerously and fewer students are being served at fraternities," Laushway said. "That's my hope. I'm trusting our students who tell me they have made great progress."
Numbers of students reporting they have gone to the emergency room, gotten into a fight, performed poorly on a test or been injured as a result of drinking have either remained the same or decreased slightly since last year, Bauerle said.
The University has intensified its efforts to prevent alcohol abuse since 1997, Asst. Director of CASE Marianne Bonday said. In that year, seven college students in Virginia died from alcohol-related causes.
Officials credited education programs, such as CASE's peer educator program Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Team and the health center's publication The Stall Seat Journal, as well as the University Police efforts to enforce drinking laws, for the decline in drinking.
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