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By Mary Carmichael
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Anyone who's taken high-school health class has seen it: the filmstrip with graphic footage of drunken-driving wrecks. For years anyone who went to college viewed it there, too. There was just one problem: it didn't keep kids from drinking. "There's absolutely no evidence those scare tactics worked," says William DeJong, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention. So administrators are trying a new strategy: educate, don't agitate. Some new college alcohol-abuse programs are straight-up shots of science, while others look at campus culture, but they all resist preachiness.
In the '90s, public concern and several high-profile deaths vaulted alcohol abuse to the top of college agendas. In 2003 the average school spent $21,000 on curbing alcohol abuse--double the total from 2000. What does the money buy? Much of it goes to science-heavy computer programs like Alcohol 101, an educational videogame in which players send a virtual student to a frat party and track his blood-alcohol level at the scene. Another popular software program, AlcoholEdu, is now in use at more than 400 colleges, including most of the Ivies--and for an increasing number of freshman classes at those schools, it's mandatory. It focuses largely on educating students about alcohol's effects on memory through case studies, interactive graphics and Q&As.
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Students may also be receptive to a kind of reverse psychology known as social norming. Rather than agonize over the problem, these programs tell undergrads that not every campus is the second coming of "Animal House." Several large schools are trying social norming, including the University of Virginia, where drinking is so established that Thomas Jefferson himself once complained about it.
Harvard public-health professor Henry Wechsler, author of "Dying to Drink," advocates more conventional measures, like cutting down on drink specials at bars. But even he admits that some old strategies don't cut it. With Photoshop now common on campus computers, fake IDs have proliferated. "This is a deeply entrenched pattern of maladaptive behavior," says Wechsler. "It's not going to disappear overnight."
Do any of the prevention programs actually work? Research on social norming's effectiveness is inconclusive; a nationwide study will be published within a year. AlcoholEdu is promising: fraternities and sororities using the program have cut heavy drinking by 14 percent. And overall levels of abstention are up. In 1980, 81 percent of college students reported drinking in the prior month. That number is now down to 68 percent--an improvement that might make a few college presidents want to raise a glass in celebration.
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