[1282] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Today's New York Times: "Study Calculates the Effects of College
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Wed Apr 10 07:17:02 2002
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Message-ID: <20020410111552.GJ8045@multics.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 07:15:52 -0400
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This seems potentially of interest; in today's New York Times:
SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 5; National Desk
LENGTH: 831 words
HEADLINE: Study Calculates the Effects Of College Drinking in U.S.
BYLINE: By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 9
Full text follows. It cites a new NIAAA (NIH branch) report that
apparently has some new statistics. Said report is available at
"http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/Reports/" in both html form
("http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/
Reports/TaskForce/TaskForce_TOC.aspx") and PDF ("http://
www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/images/TaskForce/FINALTask.pdf").
There is no specific mention of MIT in either the report or the article.
--jhawk
Study Calculates the Effects of College Drinking in U.S.
April 10, 2002
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
WASHINGTON, April 9 - On an average day, according to a new
study, 4 college students die in accidents involving
alcohol. An additional 1,370 suffer injuries tied to
drinking, the study says, and an estimated 192 are raped by
their dates or sexually assaulted after drinking.
The figures were released here today in a report by a task
force of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, a branch of the National Institutes of Health,
in what is believed to be the first study tracing alcohol
use among college students to the impact on their health
and safety. The report also recommends strategies for
campuses to reduce student drinking.
The report, "A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of
Drinking at U.S. Colleges," said the number of students who
do not drink alcohol at all had risen, to 19 percent from
15 percent from 1993 to 1999, and that most students drank
either moderately or not at all.
But the share of students who drink in binges, which the
report defines as five consecutive drinks for a man and
four drinks for a woman, remained steady at 44 percent. And
the percentage of frequent binge drinkers - students who
reported three or more binge episodes in the previous two
weeks - rose from 20 percent in 1993 to 23 percent in 1999.
The 44 percent of college students who binge account for 70
percent of all alcohol consumed by students, the report
said.
Describing the results, Dr. Ralph Hingson, the associate
dean for research at Boston University's School of Public
Health and the report's chief researcher, noted that the 13
percent of college students who reported having been
assaulted by classmates who drank too much translated into
600,000 people - equal to "the entire city of Boston."
"I think actually getting the numbers out will help the
public understand that this is perhaps a larger problem
than people might otherwise have thought," he said.
The report also found that 8 percent of college students,
or 400,000 people, admitted to having unprotected sex when
drinking, while 2 percent said they had sex when they were
too drunk to give consent.
The report analyzed data from the Census and the Department
of Education, as well as from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's National College Health Risk
Behavior Survey; Harvard University's College Alcohol
Survey; traffic accident records from the Department of
Transportation; and an account in the journal Annals of
Emergency Medicine about 300 injuries involving alcohol
that were not traffic-related.
The report's figures on alcohol-related injuries, sexual
assaults and rapes came from Harvard's 1999 survey, which
questioned 12,317 students at 128 colleges and
universities, and extrapolated the results to the 8 million
students at two- and four-year institutions.
The survey asks students if, since the school year started,
they had "experienced any of the following because of other
students' drinking: been assaulted, pushed or hit; been a
victim of sexual assault, date rape."
While the Harvard survey was conducted in 1993, 1997 and
1999, the new report is the first to calculate the impact
of its findings for all students across the country.
Of the 1,445 alcohol-related deaths a year - or 4 a day -
1,138 came as a result of car crashes, according to an
analysis of coroners' reports, C.D.C. morbidity reports on
unintentional deaths and data on traffic fatalities from
the National Transportation Safety Board.
The report on college drinking found that drinking was
heaviest among white male students attending four-year
institutions, and lower at historically black colleges and
universities, community colleges and among students who
live at home.
Much of the drinking that was identified revolves around
fraternities and sports events. It is also starting earlier
in the week. "Drinking has moved back from Saturday night
to Friday night to Thursday night," said Mark S. Goldman,
director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Research
Institute at the University of South Florida and another of
the report's researchers. He added that students drink most
heavily in their first months at school, suggesting that
over time, many taper off.
In recent years, universities have started to test new
strategies to curb student drinking. Some have dropped
campaigns that use posters of blood-spattered accident
scenes to illustrate alcohol's damage in favor of campaigns
that emphasize the norm as the 60 percent of college
students who drink moderately or not at all.
Dr. Hingson said that preliminary studies show alcohol use
had dropped by 20 percent at some campuses that used this
new approach.
While saying that no single solution would work on every
campus, the report recommended that colleges and
universities form partnerships with surrounding communities
to limit drinking. Otherwise, the researchers said,
controls on alcohol on campus would simply drive students
into bars or fraternity houses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/national/10ALCO.html?ex=1019436588&ei=1&en=d31249eda301e560
For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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