Binge drinking isn't the norm, schools teach

But with the list of serious alcohol-related incidents on campuses growing, many colleges are trying to instill in their students a novel concept: that most of their friends probably don't drink to excess. Many schools are using the so-called "social norms" method of advertising, a way of changing students' perceptions of how many of their peers binge drink, according to Joel Epstein, the associate director of the U.S. Department of Education's task force against campus drinking. "The research from many campaigns is that students aren't drinking that much," Epstein said. "The schools are trying to challenge this fiction that every student drinks heavily." Knowing that not everyone binge drinks may help deter some students from binging themselves, according to Rob Foss, who helped lead an alcohol study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "[People] follow what they think is what people do," he said. Foss' study last month found that on average 72 percent of UNC-Chapel Hill students returned home at night with a blood alcohol content of zero. Even on the traditional party nights of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 66 percent of students had a .00 BAC, while on non-party nights the percentage was 86 percent. These findings surprise a lot of people, according to Foss, because people's perception of college drinking is not in tune with what is actually going on. "[The] proportion of people that are actually drinking or drink a lot is a lot lower than people like to think," Foss said. UNC has used the study results to organize its campaign. The new campaign -- entitled "2 out of 3, .00 BAC" -- is aimed mainly at incoming freshmen to make them aware that a large number of students do not drink a lot or at all. "We want students to have accurate information as they're making their decisions" to drink or not, said Susan Kitchen, UNC's vice chancellor for student affairs. Many other schools are also emphasizing the fact that fewer students than perceived actually drink in their campaigns, according to Epstein. A study at the University of Arizona found similar results as at UNC: Most students were not drinking a lot but thought others were. That school is using those figures for education purposes in much the same way, according to Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Specialist Liz Shallenberger. Arizona's three-fold campaign -- aimed mainly at freshmen -- emphasizes the fact that most students have "four or fewer drinks when they party." Since the campaign was started in 1995, the university has seen a "pretty significant decline" in the number of Arizona students that begin binge drinking in college, Shallenberger said. Penn's recently hired alcohol coordinator, Stephanie Ives, was part of Arizona's effort to reduce alcohol abuse on that campus. At Dartmouth College, ads will be on display showing the results of a campus study that 58 percent of students do not feel alcohol is necessary or important at a party. But all of these schools' statistics contrast with other recent studies. A study by the Harvard University School of Public Health showed 52 percent of drinkers surveyed in 1997 said they drink to get drunk. And other studies have shown that 40 percent of college students regularly binge drink.