TheEnforcer
11-26-2005, 12:42 PM
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=62934
Data show UW binge drinking way beyond norm
00:00 am 11/26/05
KAREN RIVEDAL
A Jager bomb - a shot of Jagermeister liqueur dropped into a glass of Red Bull energy drink - is a popular libation among college students. Five or more in a sitting would qualify as binge drinking. A study shows far more UW System students binge drink than their peers nationwide,
(Photo illustration by JOHN MANIACI - State Journal?)
It may be little comfort, but it's official now.
Students in the University of Wisconsin System are drinking dangerously at a rate fully one- third higher than their peers nationwide, with the hangovers, missed classes, DUIs and unprotected sex to show for it.
And students at UW- Madison - party-central for the entire region at Halloween and not exactly stone-sober any other time - are doing even worse.
A first-of-its-kind survey, done in spring 2005 and released this month, found that 78 percent of System undergraduates drank alcohol in the previous month, with 59 percent reporting "binge drinking" - defined as five or more drinks in one sitting - at least once in the previous 14 days.
At UW-Madison alone, the binge rate was even higher, at 66 percent. Both the System average and UW-Madison's rate far exceed the 44 percent average for college students nationwide
"Alcohol abuse among UW students is rampant," Regent Elizabeth Burmaster said at this month's UW Board of Regents meeting in Madison.
The silver lining?
Pretty thin, at this point. System President Kevin Reilly noted the survey at least provides a baseline to judge the effectiveness of prevention programs at System campuses, with follow-up surveys planned every other year.
"The data themselves are very troubling," Reilly said. "But this will allow us to better create and target programs to help alleviate the problems."
Some avoid alcohol Additionally, a closer look at survey results points up one potential positive. While it's clear most students drink to excess with some frequency, the survey also found that a fifth of students reported not drinking at all in the previous month.
"I think that definitely deserves more attention, to find out why 20 percent are deciding not to drink and the important lessons that can be drawn from that," said David Glisch- Sanchez, academic affairs director of United Council of UW Students, a statewide lobbying organization staffed largely by recent graduates.
Glisch-Sanchez also said it shouldn't be surprising to see System students drinking more than the national collegiate average when the state as a whole is guilty of the same thing. A study this year by the Harvard School of Public Health - ground zero for national data about college alcohol abuse - showed binge drinking among college students in the 10 states with the lowest rates of adult, non-college binge drinking is about 32 percent lower than in the 10 states with the highest, which includes Wisconsin.
"We are a state, for better or worse, of drinkers," Glisch- Sanchez said. "At the end of the day, people are going to make their own choices."
Critics of higher education's heavy emphasis on alcohol education and prevention - those who think the entire topic is an overblown concern or not the way to spend taxpayer dollars or grants - also have some facts on their side. It's indisputable that despite heavy drinking on campuses, many students still study hard, get good grades and do lots of things that may have nothing to do with alcohol, such as playing intramural sports, joining student groups and volunteering in the community.
And after college, most former students put their hard- partying days behind them, as jobs and families bring more responsibilities.
"Most graduates go on to successful careers and most students are not going to become alcoholic," said Susan Crowley, who runs UW- Madison's alcohol-prevention effort, known as PACE.
High cost of abuse But there's still reason to be concerned about the measurable harm that many students are doing to themselves - and likely the people around them - right now, Crowley said.
"College drinking today is different from 20 or 30 years ago, when (current students') parents were in college," she said. "The big difference is students today are drinking so excessively and putting themselves at such high risk. For the individuals involved, it's life-threatening."
Recent examples abound of the individual and community cost of abusive drinking.
UW-Madison in August was named the nation's top party school by the Princeton Review, an unscientific but highly publicized annual poll that does little for the institution's reputation as one of the nation's premier public research universities. UW-Madison also was featured prominently in a series of stories about high-risk drinking on college campuses this month in USA Today.
In October, UW-Madison issued its own alarm about student drinking, noting that trips to the detox center for alcohol poisoning surged in the first six weeks of the semester compared to the same time a year ago. The number in late October - even before Halloween in Madison - was 30 students, compared to 17 such cases in late October 2004.
And while this year's pre- Halloween detox number wasn't very different from 2003, when it was 27, officials noted that the serious drinkers at UW-Madison continue getting younger. The average age of those taken to detox has fallen from 20.4 years old to 18.9 since 2002.
Halloween weekend itself took its usual toll, with 468 people arrested on a total of 700 charges. About 100 people went to jail, eight went to detox and three were hospitalized for alcohol-related issues. Tested blood-alcohol levels ranged from 0.05 percent to 0.30.
And there was at least one serious injury, when a Halloween reveler from Illinois fell down a flight of stairs off campus. Nicholas Giancana, 19, of Elgin lay in a coma at UW Hospital for about 12 days, before being discharged on Nov. 14 to another rehab center in Wheaton, Ill. His mother, Karen, this week said he is talking and walking again, with some difficulty, but still has serious problems and will probably be hospitalized another few weeks.
Most of those arrested during Halloween were young people from outside UW-Madison, and the event itself was largely peaceful, compared to the riots and damage on State Street in previous years. But it cost Madison police about $350,000 to keep the peace, part of the roughly $1 million that the city and university spend annually for alcohol-related policing and campus cleanups.
'It's a social thing' UW-Parkside senior Chris Semenas, who represents students on the UW Board of Regents, said he was surprised - and worried - to see the high levels of binge-drinking reported in the System survey. He hoped more work with bar and liquor-store owners and community leaders at every System campus could help control the problem.
"Students are going to drink and that's the reality," Semenas said. "It's a social thing. However, we need to be looking at ways to be safe about it, so students aren't getting themselves sick and drinking and driving."
Already, every System campus provides alcohol education programs, some focused on first-year students. Campuses also have tried different types of sanctions, including parental notification of dangerous drinking, and alcohol-free alternative programming, such as keeping gyms and student unions open late on the weekends.
Reilly said research showed that working with tavern owners to limit drink specials can reduce high-risk drinking. Finding ways to change student perceptions also could be helpful, he said, noting students consistently over-estimated how much their peers drank in the System survey.
Reilly didn't believe that abusive student drinking would ever stop. But he said campuses had to keep trying.
"You read about these tragic things that happen because kids make a mistake on this," Reilly said. "The question is, how can you keep the (instances of) bad behavior to as low a number as possible and help protect students' lives?"
========================================
5 drinks? I also read in a different article that it is four for women?
Does anybody else think that is a pretty low amount of drinks to be considered binge drinking? :scratchin To me it seems that number would make the vast majority of drinkers binge drinkers. :scratchin
Data show UW binge drinking way beyond norm
00:00 am 11/26/05
KAREN RIVEDAL
A Jager bomb - a shot of Jagermeister liqueur dropped into a glass of Red Bull energy drink - is a popular libation among college students. Five or more in a sitting would qualify as binge drinking. A study shows far more UW System students binge drink than their peers nationwide,
(Photo illustration by JOHN MANIACI - State Journal?)
It may be little comfort, but it's official now.
Students in the University of Wisconsin System are drinking dangerously at a rate fully one- third higher than their peers nationwide, with the hangovers, missed classes, DUIs and unprotected sex to show for it.
And students at UW- Madison - party-central for the entire region at Halloween and not exactly stone-sober any other time - are doing even worse.
A first-of-its-kind survey, done in spring 2005 and released this month, found that 78 percent of System undergraduates drank alcohol in the previous month, with 59 percent reporting "binge drinking" - defined as five or more drinks in one sitting - at least once in the previous 14 days.
At UW-Madison alone, the binge rate was even higher, at 66 percent. Both the System average and UW-Madison's rate far exceed the 44 percent average for college students nationwide
"Alcohol abuse among UW students is rampant," Regent Elizabeth Burmaster said at this month's UW Board of Regents meeting in Madison.
The silver lining?
Pretty thin, at this point. System President Kevin Reilly noted the survey at least provides a baseline to judge the effectiveness of prevention programs at System campuses, with follow-up surveys planned every other year.
"The data themselves are very troubling," Reilly said. "But this will allow us to better create and target programs to help alleviate the problems."
Some avoid alcohol Additionally, a closer look at survey results points up one potential positive. While it's clear most students drink to excess with some frequency, the survey also found that a fifth of students reported not drinking at all in the previous month.
"I think that definitely deserves more attention, to find out why 20 percent are deciding not to drink and the important lessons that can be drawn from that," said David Glisch- Sanchez, academic affairs director of United Council of UW Students, a statewide lobbying organization staffed largely by recent graduates.
Glisch-Sanchez also said it shouldn't be surprising to see System students drinking more than the national collegiate average when the state as a whole is guilty of the same thing. A study this year by the Harvard School of Public Health - ground zero for national data about college alcohol abuse - showed binge drinking among college students in the 10 states with the lowest rates of adult, non-college binge drinking is about 32 percent lower than in the 10 states with the highest, which includes Wisconsin.
"We are a state, for better or worse, of drinkers," Glisch- Sanchez said. "At the end of the day, people are going to make their own choices."
Critics of higher education's heavy emphasis on alcohol education and prevention - those who think the entire topic is an overblown concern or not the way to spend taxpayer dollars or grants - also have some facts on their side. It's indisputable that despite heavy drinking on campuses, many students still study hard, get good grades and do lots of things that may have nothing to do with alcohol, such as playing intramural sports, joining student groups and volunteering in the community.
And after college, most former students put their hard- partying days behind them, as jobs and families bring more responsibilities.
"Most graduates go on to successful careers and most students are not going to become alcoholic," said Susan Crowley, who runs UW- Madison's alcohol-prevention effort, known as PACE.
High cost of abuse But there's still reason to be concerned about the measurable harm that many students are doing to themselves - and likely the people around them - right now, Crowley said.
"College drinking today is different from 20 or 30 years ago, when (current students') parents were in college," she said. "The big difference is students today are drinking so excessively and putting themselves at such high risk. For the individuals involved, it's life-threatening."
Recent examples abound of the individual and community cost of abusive drinking.
UW-Madison in August was named the nation's top party school by the Princeton Review, an unscientific but highly publicized annual poll that does little for the institution's reputation as one of the nation's premier public research universities. UW-Madison also was featured prominently in a series of stories about high-risk drinking on college campuses this month in USA Today.
In October, UW-Madison issued its own alarm about student drinking, noting that trips to the detox center for alcohol poisoning surged in the first six weeks of the semester compared to the same time a year ago. The number in late October - even before Halloween in Madison - was 30 students, compared to 17 such cases in late October 2004.
And while this year's pre- Halloween detox number wasn't very different from 2003, when it was 27, officials noted that the serious drinkers at UW-Madison continue getting younger. The average age of those taken to detox has fallen from 20.4 years old to 18.9 since 2002.
Halloween weekend itself took its usual toll, with 468 people arrested on a total of 700 charges. About 100 people went to jail, eight went to detox and three were hospitalized for alcohol-related issues. Tested blood-alcohol levels ranged from 0.05 percent to 0.30.
And there was at least one serious injury, when a Halloween reveler from Illinois fell down a flight of stairs off campus. Nicholas Giancana, 19, of Elgin lay in a coma at UW Hospital for about 12 days, before being discharged on Nov. 14 to another rehab center in Wheaton, Ill. His mother, Karen, this week said he is talking and walking again, with some difficulty, but still has serious problems and will probably be hospitalized another few weeks.
Most of those arrested during Halloween were young people from outside UW-Madison, and the event itself was largely peaceful, compared to the riots and damage on State Street in previous years. But it cost Madison police about $350,000 to keep the peace, part of the roughly $1 million that the city and university spend annually for alcohol-related policing and campus cleanups.
'It's a social thing' UW-Parkside senior Chris Semenas, who represents students on the UW Board of Regents, said he was surprised - and worried - to see the high levels of binge-drinking reported in the System survey. He hoped more work with bar and liquor-store owners and community leaders at every System campus could help control the problem.
"Students are going to drink and that's the reality," Semenas said. "It's a social thing. However, we need to be looking at ways to be safe about it, so students aren't getting themselves sick and drinking and driving."
Already, every System campus provides alcohol education programs, some focused on first-year students. Campuses also have tried different types of sanctions, including parental notification of dangerous drinking, and alcohol-free alternative programming, such as keeping gyms and student unions open late on the weekends.
Reilly said research showed that working with tavern owners to limit drink specials can reduce high-risk drinking. Finding ways to change student perceptions also could be helpful, he said, noting students consistently over-estimated how much their peers drank in the System survey.
Reilly didn't believe that abusive student drinking would ever stop. But he said campuses had to keep trying.
"You read about these tragic things that happen because kids make a mistake on this," Reilly said. "The question is, how can you keep the (instances of) bad behavior to as low a number as possible and help protect students' lives?"
========================================
5 drinks? I also read in a different article that it is four for women?
Does anybody else think that is a pretty low amount of drinks to be considered binge drinking? :scratchin To me it seems that number would make the vast majority of drinkers binge drinkers. :scratchin