<p>“Mini— If nothing else, you have to give the college props for publishing the data from that survey. How many colleges would have the balls to put that stuff in the public domain?”</p>
<p>I not only should, I have done so, repeatedly. They know they have a (to quote the Record) a “pervasive problem”, and the first step to dealing with it is making public that it exists. </p>
<p>Experimental data suggests that the Williams survey actually understates the problem (though it is similar to the data they made public in their diversity report from two years earlier). That is because folks who drink “4 drinks in a sitting” (and hence not defined as “binge drinkers”) usually underestimate by one, and, if it is hard liquor, the average student, when asked to measure out a standard drink actually pours 1.75 drinks. In other words, the non-binge-drinking 4-drink drinker on average will have had 8.75 drinks, if it was hard liquor. I’m betting that it is hard liquor that the college administration will end up turning its sights on - there are rarely hospitalizations from beer.</p>
<p>The Williams survey is rare (and to be congratulated) by its attempt to try to estimate “heavy drinking”. It is rare for a “binge drinker”, however defined, to have done so only once in the past two weeks, but very few college surveys attempt to gauge incidence.</p>
<p>As to whether folks should like it, I would say, “Look: the data all indicate that heavy drinking/binge drinking is more common at Williams than at many likeminded schools. This is not at all surprising, as Williams has every single risk factor found to be associated with heavy alcohol use by the Harvard School of Public Health except fraternities. It is also true that a large number of students like it that way. And it is also true that, as at other schools, probably about a quarter of the student body doesn’t drink at all. You might love the school, or hate it, and that’s up to you to find out.”</p>
<p>And then, as I do with all schools, I would encourage a Thursday night overnite.</p>