Wasted: Your Child's Education?

Editor's Note: Part 1 of a 2-part series on alcohol on university campusesListen? Do you hear a giant whooshing noise?The sound you hear is the money of naïve parents being flushed down vomit-filled dorm/frat/sorority toilets.

I had heard about binge drinking on college campuses, but not until my own daughter described the kids who always seemed to talk about how "wasted" they got at last night's party, and how "trashed" they were at the get together the night before, did I get an image of how pervasive a problem-or popular pastime-drinking was. Not until I heard her describe having to go to her dorm bathroom and step around the vomit did I do a mental flinch at the atmosphere she was subjected to.

There are lots of things to worry about here, and getting drunk is just the first and most visible of them.

We've all heard the horror stories: a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology died of alcohol poisoning with his blood-alcohol level at five times the drunken driving level in Massachusetts. A woman at Ferris State (Michigan) and another at the University of Michigan died after falling out of windows, drunken. Another young man attending MSU drank himself to death while bingeing on his 21st birthday. I'm not picking on any schools in particular: it could happen next at your son or daughter's school. It could happen to your kid. The situation in Canada is very similar with a study from the University of Toronto covering 16 different Canada universities, showing that over a third of students reported drinking more than eight drinks on a single occasion.

If your kids are drinking to excess, they are 21 times more likely (than non-binge drinkers) to: miss classes, fall behind in school work, damage property, get hurt, engage in unplanned or unprotected sex, drive a car after drinking.

But even if your child only seldom or never takes a drink, they are very likely to be impacted by the drinking of others students; in the same study reported above by Harvard University's School of Public Health (1999), students reported these ways they were affected by the drinking of other students: 71 percent had sleep or study interrupted, 57 percent had to take care of an intoxicated student, 36 percent had been insulted or humiliated, 23 percent had experienced an unwanted sexual advance, 23 percent had a serious argument.

The experts define binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in quicksuccession for a male, and four or more for a female, with the main purpose of just getting drunk. Drinking games are sometimes used.

While some studies show that 30-50 percent of students are binge drinkers (with 20 percent doing so frequently), on the positive side this means that anywhere between 50 to 70 percent of kids on public university campuses are not binge drinkers. And some schools are definitely worse than other schools.

Unfortunately, binge drinking is a huge part of the sorority and fraternity scene today. Of Greek members who lived in sorority houses, 80 percent were binge drinkers and 86 percent of men binged regularly. (Wechsler, Kuh and Davenport, 1996). The ideals and foundations of Greek membership are violated by this lawbreaking and disgusting behavior. However, many kids build lifelong bonds through their parties.

Why do we let it go on? (Of course, lest I be too quick to wag a finger, I probably broke a law driving too fast to work this morning, too.) We'll look at the complexity of solutions in the next Another Way column. The tendency to overdrink often begins in high school and it is a community-wide problem, regardless of whether you have kids in college or not. See www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov

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Contributed by Melodie Davis from her weekly columnANOTHER WAY (http://www.thirdway.com/aw/).For information on using Another Way in a local newspaper, contact:ANOTHER WAY, 1251 Virginia Ave., Harrisonburg, VA 22801-2497; or call1-800-999-3534; fax at 540-434-5556; or email me at:Melodie@mennomedia.org