Colleges Have Anti-Drinking Rules on the Books, but Which Ones Actually Work?

If your college receives federal funds, you have — or at least you should have — alcohol policies on your website. But can students find them? Can they understand them? And, most important, which ones work?

Four researchers investigated those questions for a group of 15 colleges and universities called the Maryland Collaborative to Reduce College Drinking and Related Problems. The scholars published their results in the latest issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

While there’s been considerable study of how the off-campus climate affects students’ drinking habits, the authors say they are trying to fill a void, offering insight about how effective various campus policies are.

College binge drinking has declined since 2008, says one of the authors of the journal’s report, Molly Mitchell, a senior alcohol-policy program manager at the Bloomberg School of Public Health of the Johns Hopkins University. But, the report notes, it’s still a big issue. More than half, or 53.6 percent, of college students ages 18 to 22 drank alcohol during the past month, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. “Binge drinking,” which the survey defines as consuming five or more drinks on the same occasion, “was reported by 35 percent of college students.”

Maryland’s college-alcohol statistics are roughly average for the nation, says Mitchell, so the study’s findings should be of use to colleges nationwide.

Among strategies that work best, the researchers say, are prohibiting alcohol in public places on the campus (including sports arenas) and at student-organization recruitment events, as well as banning tailgating, drinking games, and alcohol delivery to the campus. Rules like that, the report’s authors say, not only restrict alcohol consumption but also are “likely to influence social norms around drinking.” Banning drinking at events like recruiting events in the fall “sets the normative tone for the school year.”

Also important, the study suggests: Make sure students know exactly what consequences will follow which infractions. And make sure they know that if they’re cited or arrested off campus by the local police, the college will be notified.

Penalties deemed to work best have a “strong, population-wide deterrent effect,” the report says. Those include “student-organization probation and loss of student-organization status.”

Less effective, but still useful as part of a " ‘package’ of graduated sanctions,” are suspension and probation. “Because of their severity and the extended deliberative process often required to enforce them,” they “become less swift and certain.”

What’s ineffective? Keg registration, according to two expert panels assembled for the study. Prohibiting hard liquor or kegs on the campus or in private dorm rooms and residence halls is somewhat effective, the experts say, but less so because such efforts “have been shown in the literature to result in beverage switching by students (i.e., shifting from hard liquor to beer or beer to hard liquor).”

Finding the Rules

For students to heed colleges’ alcohol rules, they have to be able to find and understand them. That’s a problem. Alcohol policies for colleges in the Maryland group could generally be found by students within 30 seconds, although the rules were spread out across multiple locations instead of just one web page.

But colleges need to simplify the language in those policies. Even the clearest rules, the study found, “would be considered difficult, confusing, and best understood by someone with at least some college education.”

A limitation of the study is that it didn’t measure enforcement of alcohol policies. That, the authors write, was “deemed beyond the scope of this study.” Instead, the panels assembled by the researchers anticipated from their knowledge and experience which tactics work best.

One panel was made up of five alcohol-policy experts. The other had seven members drawn from the collaborative’s advisory board: three vice presidents for student affairs, the director of a campus alcohol and drug center, a campus officer on alcohol and drug education, a member of a town-gown coalition, and a local prevention coordinator.

The collaborative’s member colleges varied considerably, with enrollments from 900 to 19,049; gender distribution from 23 to 95 percent female, racial composition from 15 to 88 percent minority, and community from rural to urban. In total, they enroll about 73,000 full-time undergraduates.

The colleges studied are doing a lot right, the authors report, but have room for improvement. Of the 17 measures considered most effective, the median number the colleges had in place was six. Of the 13 measures considered somewhat effective, the median number in place was five. The report’s authors are following up in writing and in meetings to discuss how each of the colleges can improve its policies, Mitchell says.

For colleges in the seven-year-old collaborative, the study offers not only specific recommendations but also a way to elevate the conversation around alcohol beyond embedded cultural traditions and beliefs, says Nancy D. Young, vice president for student affairs at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Expectations around athletic events, for instance, influence how colleges organize them. Findings like those in the report, Young says, bring evidence-based ideas and possibilities to change the status quo. After all, a colleague of hers pointed out, decades ago the researchers and administrators discussing the issue would have all been sitting around a table smoking.

Alexander C. Kafka is a Chronicle senior editor. Follow him on Twitter @AlexanderKafka, or email him at alexander.kafka@chronicle.com.