Battle College Drinking...

Schools try new strategies to battle college drinking

The bars near the University of Virginia were packed on graduation day, seniors in billowing black gowns drinking away their final few hours before entering the real world. It was 7 a.m.

Waiters and bartenders, many of whom had worked until the Saturday night shift ended a few hours earlier, shuttled pitchers of Bloody Marys, mimosas and manmosas (beer, vodka and orange juice) and poured round after round of shots: cinnamon fireballs, Southern Comfort with lime, and straight tequila.

“Sweet Caroline” blared as sorority sisters in flip-flops danced and sipped mixed drinks at the Virginian. At the Biltmore, the bouncer waved in anyone wearing commencement garb. The Pigeon Hole put out a chalkboard sign that originally read “Graduate in style!” but someonehad crossed out “in style” and written “under the influence!”

At Trinity Irish Pub, students crammed onto a balcony that provided the perfect spot to look for friends and snap photos. Below, dozens more gathered on a patio, drinking on who-knows-whose bill.

 “Our tab is already $400!” one student excitedly announced from atop a black metal chair at about 8:20 a.m., with another solid hour left before they were due at the ceremony. One of his friends smirked: “It’s not $500 yet?”

A 21-year-old double-major wearing a wrinkled blue button-down under his black gown defended this scene as he drank a mimosa from a plastic cup. Soon his other hand was filled with a cheap shot of vodka, bringing him to at least half a dozen drinks in less than two hours — not that he was counting.

“All of us have jobs. All of us have real majors. None of us got majors like psychology,” he said. “This is out of character, even for us. We are getting it out of our systems now, and then we will go into the real world.”

But, would his parents approve of him stumbling through this symbolic day?

“I told my parents what I was doing, and they were like, ‘YOLO,’ ” he said with a laugh. He paused before seriously requesting that his name and identifying characteristics not appear in any article a future employer might read.

“YOLO” — you only live once — is often uttered by college students as they shrug and do something they normally wouldn’t do, such as drinking until they black out, experimenting with drugs or trying a new sexual experience.

This fall’s freshmen likely will find that the higher education tradition of excessive alcohol consumption is alive and well, but there are new variables: Energy drink mixers keep students awake and drinking longer. A historically high number of students legally take prescribed antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, which can be dangerous when mixed with booze.

Today’s college students, who were mostly born in the early 1990s, have cellphone cameras and social media accounts that allow for the sharing of every embarrassing turn of a disastrous night. That can lead to a painful tarnishing of reputations or the celebration of reckless behavior. And news of the latest drinking trends spreads quickly on the Web. Those trends have colored perceptions of college students, but are they that much wilder than their parents were?

The scholarly standard for “too much” was long ago set at five drinks or more at least once in a two-week period. For three decades, that national binge drinking rate has hovered around 40 percent.

But college officials — the ones tasked with making sure students don’t hurt themselves or others — aren’t necessarily worried about the bulk of those students. They are concerned about the students who go out every night of the week or have dozens of drinks each month, those who occasionally drink heavily but with a lower tolerance. They worry about the black-out drunks. The violent drunks. Those who turn to alcohol and drugs instead of seeking counseling.

Alcohol is a common theme in nearly all student problems, including faltering grades, fights, injuries, suicide attempts, mental-health issues and sexual assaults. A serious drinking problem could go undiagnosed for years in an environment where heavy drinking is considered the norm. These students face a more difficult path to graduation, as they are more likely to skip class, get in trouble or not study. And if they do graduate, the transition to a working world with set hours can be difficult.

“A lot of students do grow out of it,” said Susan Bruce, director of U-Va.’s Gordie Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, “but there’s really no way to predict which ones will and which ones won’t.”

U-Va. has tracked student drinking rates since the 1960s. The heaviest drinking was back in the 1970s and ’80s, when parents of today’s students would have been enrolled, Bruce said. The rate is now in line with national averages.

Source : Nature and Health