<p>
</p>
<p>I think that is a valid working hypothesis.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s one of the problems: the heavy drinkers make themselves disproportionately visible. Just the nature of alcohol consumption; it’s hard to miss the boisterous guy with the lampshade on his head at a party!</p>
<p>Odds are that your local state U branch has average or below average rates of binge drinking. But, the “Otis the Town Drunk” students call attention to themselves. That’s why these elite schools with average or higher binge drinking rates become so uncomfortable for non-drinkers or light drinkers. They can’t escape the behaviors.</p>
<p>If high heavy/binge drinking rates are merely the perception, then social norms marketing would seem to be the way to go to make a school a more welcoming place for non- or light drinkers. At some places, I imagine the perception doesn’t match the reality.</p>
<p>Locally, however, I think that the perception is, unfortunately, closer to reality than one would like to imagine. Of the probably 10 college students that we have had working in our office part-time in the past several years, I cannot think of one who has not had at least one DWI arrest. Maybe our office has just been unlucky, and maybe law firms naturally attract the type of student who’s had run-ins with the law. (Our practice is devoted entirely to civil work, so these kids aren’t hiring us to help them in court and then applying for a job.) I hope we just see an unrepresentative sample.</p>
<p>Do we know to what extent Dartmouth, Williams, etc. have tried social norms marketing? I’ve mostly heard about that approach at big state universities.</p>
<p>nceph, we also live close to a branch of a state university. It is in a large city and is known as a “party school”. In fact, of all the kids I know who have attended there, the only ones that I know who graduated from the school also happened to have a parent on faculty.</p>
<p>I hear from the students that drinking is prevalent, but drug use is even higher. That is a difference I hear between the more “elite” schools in the area and schools at this level—alcohol use is everywhere but drug use is less evident at the “elite” schools. Is this accurate? I don’t know–I’m just getting this word of mouth.</p>
<p>Because of your post, I looked up grad. rates and retention rates at this branch state U. The fresh. retention rate is 77% and 6 yr. grad. rate is only 46%. These numbers follow what I’ve heard–kids either flunk out, parents pull them out or they transfer due to the social climate there.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think that’s more of an urban myth propogated by friends and family of college drunks to rationalize why “a little drinking now and then” is ok.</p>
<p>If we are being honest, one reason there may be more heavy drinking now is that there isn’t as much pot smoking as back in the day. Of the two, I suspect that pot smokers headed to the campus snack bar with the munchies are less disruptive than a group of near-comatose drunks.</p>
<p>“If high heavy/binge drinking rates are merely the perception, then social norms marketing would seem to be the way to go to make a school a more welcoming place for non- or light drinkers. At some places, I imagine the perception doesn’t match the reality.”</p>
<p>That is, in fact, what we have found experimentally. Social norms marketing works where the actual binge/heavy drinking rates are moderate to lower to begin with, and actually reinforce drinking behavior at schools where it is high. (Williams has not tried social norms marketing, and the evidence would suggest that to do so would be a mistake.)</p>
<p>Drug use rates are moderately low at colleges and universities these days, though higher in the west/northwest than anywhere else. Some of this is a factor of students being older (remember, though: the average undergraduate student in the U.S. currently is 24.5 years old; goes to an urban or suburban school; is a commuter; and attends at nights and/or on weekends.)</p>
<p>There is a clear association between early age of first use (i.e. 15 or lower), heavy use in college, and future alcoholism. It could be (but I have no data) that children growing in wealthier communities and/or attending residential private schools may have earlier access to alcohol.</p>
<p>Speaking personally, while I am concerned about binge drinking, I am much more concerned about “heavy” drinking (defined as two or more drinks a day nearly daily). The rates seen at schools like my alma mater or Duke (where my stepnephew attends) seem to me to be astounding, and don’t bode well for the future. </p>
<p>ID and I don’t see eye-to-eye regarding what could be most effective in the admissions office. I think he would like to see drinking students in some way screened out. I think it would be more effective simply to make known that they will ask about it. After the question about convicted of a misdemeanor or felony, please explain, they could ask, “Have you ever engaged in illicit drinking or drug use? If so, please explain.” Needless to say, lots of students might lie. That’s okay. What’s important is that GCs will know that the schools are going to ask. Then there would be all kinds of “strategies” developed to answer the question. And that’s okay, too. If the kids know (through the application) that colleges are concerned, I really do think you’d see SOME students actually change behavior.</p>
<p>“There is a clear association between early age of first use (i.e. 15 or lower), heavy use in college, and future alcoholism. It could be (but I have no data) that children growing in wealthier communities and/or attending residential private schools may have earlier access to alcohol.”</p>
<p>This appears to be true in our county - it seems like all the cases of high school drinking parties that have gotten out of hand seem to happen in the wealthiest communities. I don’t think our school is immune (and we certainly have other equally distressing issues), but I’m still waiting for high school kids from our particular community to hit the papers for drinking.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We are probably talking about the same group. The category that I think creates the problems on campus is the group Weschler identifies as “frequent binge drinkers” – those who have had 4 or 5 drinks on one occasion three or more times in the prior two weeks.</p>
<p>It seems from his surveys that this number typically runs about half of the total number of binge drinkers. It seems to me that this is a useful dividing line between a student who parties on Saturday night versus a student who is drinking heavily two or more times per week.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not really. I don’t think the colleges could screen out the drinkers. I just would like to explore some avenues of sending a message that, if you are a drunk, we don’t want you. The colleges are seemingly scared to death of sending that message. There’s absolutely no message being sent that Otis the Town drunk behavior is unacceptable. It’s all about what to do if your friend is unconcious or uncontrollably vomiting – as if it’s a perfectly normal thing to come across friends in that condition on a college campus.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I really have to disagree that boarding school kids use more alcohol. There was much more drinking going on at my home public school. At boarding schools, even “second chance” ones, we knew we’d be kicked out for drinking. My friends at home, whether caught by school or parents, did not face that fear.</p>
<p>Who are the kids going nuts drinking at elite colleges? Probably kids without a lot of freedom during high school. I saw this on a high school study abroad program. For the kids from boarding schools it was life as usual. The kids who had left home for the first time in 11th and 12th grade were the ones who tended to be out of control.</p>
<p>“Mathmom, I really have to disagree that boarding school kids use more alcohol.”</p>
<p>The data question is really not one of “more or less” use, but age of first use. (I don’t have any source of a data that breaks this out by income, or school status.)</p>
<p>Within college populations, I haven’t seen any indications of association between heavy drinking (at the entire school) and private high school attendance. There is, however, an association between race (white) and income (higher).</p>
<p>I never said “boarding school” I was refering to the “wealthy community” part of the quote. What I’m observing is the actions of public school kids in our county where some communities are much wealthier than others.</p>
<p>Now if we want to talk boarding schools, I can talk to you about the number of kids expelled (for drinking or drugs mostly) from my high school class of 1973. There were about 80 girls in my graduating class and another 30 or so girls who were in our class until asked to leave. I know this school is much better monitored now and I suspect that is true of other boarding schools too.</p>
<p>As for those public school kids in the NYC suburbs, it’s only anecdotal evidence (what gets published in the local papers), but it appears that the wealthier towns have a bigger problem with underaged drinking. You can choose higher average SAT scores and better schools, but it appears you are also choosing more disposable income and kids making poor choices about how to spend it.</p>
<p>Could someone elaborate on what “social norms marketing” is as currently practiced by some universities? Thanks.</p>
<p>Mini can give your more detail, but I can give you the short form.</p>
<p>Social norms marketing makes the assumption that college students drink because they think “everyone else” is drinking so they are supposed to as well.</p>
<p>A social norms marketing campaign would attempt to combat this by providing data to students to show that there is actually less drinking on campus than they thought.</p>
<p>Here’s a example of school using the approach and links to sample informational posters placed on campus:</p>
<p><a href=“404”>http://www.hws.edu/studentlife/resources/alcohol/socialnorms.asp</a></p>
<p>As you might expect, this the kind of program that the beer and liquor companies support with their “look at us, we are responsible corporate citizens” dollars. Of course, that’s a miniscule drop in the bucket compared to the dollars they spend promoting drinking to teenagers.</p>
<p>Sure. The idea is that students (especially the younger ones) actually think there is more drinking going on, and more students are doing it, than really are. Some students think that the the campus norm is for students to have 6 or 7 drinks at a time when it is 3 or 4, and some students think that everyone drinks, when in fact 30% of the campus doesn’t, and that some students think everyone is drinking everyday, when in fact it is almost all weekend drinking. So what happens is that, based on actual survey data, college health departments or campus coordinators publicize the truth. It does tend to work when drinking is not so massive to begin with, or coordinated with campus sweeps early in freshman year by town police and the like.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t work where lots of heavy drinking really is the norm. And, it has now been experimentally proven by firsthand observation, that students underestimate their own drinking. A student who says he has 3-4 drinks in a “sitting” on average (and hence is classified as a "non-binge-drinker), underestimates by 1, and hence is in fact a binge drinker, even though the data don’t show it. AND, when asked to pour their own drinks, students on average pour a drink 1.75X the standard. So what does that mean? The median 4-drink drinker (classified as a non-binger) actually on average has 8.75 drinks! (half have more than that, half left.) Hence the survey data are generally speaking underestimates of both the extent and intensity of campus drinking. Hence, the social norms marketing approach may not work even in situations where it is thought on brief examination that it should.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I’m guessing you’re living in Westchester. Are you sure that it isn’t just more of a news “worthy” story when kids trash a house in Scarsdale or Bedford than when they do in Port Chester?</p>
<p>Anyway, isn’t it true that in countries (like several in Europe) where the legal drinking age is 16 there is less of a problem?</p>
<p>I have a hard time believing the kids at elite schols were the ones drinking at 13. In my admittedly limited experience, it is not the high schieving kids who were drinking early. Half of my middle school class was drinking regularly by the end of 6th grade. They were by and large kids going nowhere fast. I’ll also note that my middle school was largely lower middle class. What the drinkers had in common was parents who were out of touch with where they were and what they were doing and who did not have high expectations ofthem.</p>
<p>As for boarding schools, there are still many where a considerable percentage are asked to leave. They are not the selective ones. They’re also not the ones giving a lot of financial aid which does support the spoiled rich kid theory. The one I went to, which has a rich kid reputation, seemed to have way more kids whose parents would have kicked their butts and sent them to rehab than parents who turned the other way as in my home town.</p>
<p>It really is hard for me to reconcile the facts as presented here.</p>
<p>Suze - Which facts are you having a hard time reconciling? Ones correlating heavy drinking with income and ethnicity/race? The specific drinking rates at particular schools? I’m not challenging you; I really just wasn’t clear what you were saying.</p>
<p>I am also wondering what you think about the situation at Dartmouth, since you will be a student there. (if I understood you correctly). Are you concerned about the drinking levels? Do you think you’ll be interested in joining a sorority?</p>
<p>Suze:</p>
<p>Some 30 years ago now, I had precisely the opposite experience to yours on a high school year abroad program. The boarding school kids – not all of them, but maybe half of them – had no idea how to integrate their behavior with the real world. They were absolutely out of control with drinking and drug use – the metaphor I always used was “exploding”. We non-boarders certainly drank, too, but we didn’t do what interesteddad calls the “Otis the Town Drunk” thing. The whole experience convinced me that I didn’t want to go to boarding school when I came back.</p>
<p>There is far, far more drinking at the elite private school my kids used to attend than at their public high school, although there is certainly drinking there, too. Drinking is nearly universal at the private school (and, indeed, at every elite private school in this area). My son thinks he knows only two people in his class there who don’t have a problem with alcohol or drugs at some level (and one of them is a kid scared straight by his older sibling’s very substantial problems). At the public school, the high-achievement, competitive kids generally don’t drink, and look down on those who do. They are afraid of being confused with the losers.</p>
<p>My own experience pretty much tallies perfectly with JHS’s. When I was an undergraduate at an ivy league school (quite a few years ago) it was the elite prep school kids who were the biggest drinkers. It really did seem as though the two lessons they had learned best at school were how to drink and how to get away with breaking the rules. Not a single one of the ivy aspiring kids at my admittedly crummy public high school drank. Now, a generation later, my own children attend a public high school, although one that is much better than the one I attended. Still, none of the very top kids in my daughter’s senior year class last year drank, and my daughter, now a freshman herself at a (different) ivy league school, still finds that the biggest drinkers are from prep schools. I realize that this is very small sample size, but it interesting to me that 25 years later her experience parallels my own.</p>
<p>JHS:
If this were known up front by parents, why would they send their kids to an environment like this since it’s a private? Is it that the parents don’t know until after the fact?</p>