There is something almost mythic about a college campus in September:
the loping strides and eager faces on the quadrangles in the piquant early-autumn
air; the excitement and nostalgia of green-and-gold-leaved football weekends;
the dorm rooms packed with drunken students bellowing their brains out,
attempting seduction in exhalations of cheap beer, and bringing up orange-brown
stews of sour-smelling vomit.
For some aging former collegians, perhaps, the subject of student drinking
still conjures up a fondly (if hazily) remembered rite of passage, along
with other memories of the last delicious moment in life when it seemed
permissible to be utterly thoughtless. Indeed, it was scarcely a generation
ago that Northeastern (not untypically, for that era) furnished kegs of
beer at what became riotous freshman orientations, while the Senior Celebration
on the main quad was awash in alcohol into the early 1990s. Today, however,
most adults concerned with the behavior of college students, at N.U. and
elsewhere, take a sterner view, and many students find themselves on a
shortening tether when it comes to alcohol.
Here in Boston, two dozen schools have banded together to fight against
illicit and irresponsible student drinking-with Northeastern leading the
charge. In April 1997, the Boston Coalition (a group of government, business,
community, religious, educational, and philanthropic organizations and
institutions dedicated to battling violence and substance abuse in the
city) convened a task force of college and university presidents on underage
and problem drinking. N.U. was asked to take the lead because the university
is seen as having a particularly effective set of alcohol-related policies
and programs. President Richard Freeland agreed to chair the task force
because, he says, "I thought that the strength of our policies and
the strength of our stance-which is one I very much believe in-put us in
a reasonable position to assert leadership." In December of last year,
the institutions on the task force agreed to adopt a common set of policies-including
many already in effect at Northeastern-to combat alcohol abuse on their
campuses.
To see some of the reasons for today's concern about student alcohol
use and abuse, consider some recent events at the school that is a local
leader in anti-alcohol efforts. Last May, two male residents of Melvin
Hall-one of Northeastern's freshman residence halls-allegedly raped a female
resident of the building after a party there that all three students had
attended, and where the victim and at least one of her attackers had been
drinking heavily. Only a few weeks earlier, an N.U. student was injured
in a brawl that broke out at an off-campus party on Hemenway Street at
which underage students had been drinking. Then in June, eighteen Northeastern
students were arrested or cited after another alcohol-fueled party in a
private apartment building on Hemenway Street; three of the students, all
of them freshmen, allegedly threw beer bottles from the roof as Boston
police arrived in response to a complaint about noise and vandalism.
Northeastern is hardly alone, of course, in dealing with such consequences
of illegal and/or excessive student drinking. All across the country, in
recent years-particularly since the fall of 1997, when students at MIT,
UMassAmherst, and Louisiana State University died in well-publicized,
alcohol-related mishaps-colleges and universities have been cracking down
on alcohol. They have targeted not only specific behaviors but also a campus
culture that seemed a laughing matter twenty years ago when John Belushi
starred in the movie Animal House, but that no longer seems funny to a
generation that has graduated from National Lampoon and Saturday Night
Live to roles as parents and even college administrators.
This new approach to campus drinking has been motivated, in part, by
a widespread belief that students today drink more heavily than they did
in previous generations. For his part, President Freeland, who has observed
and taken part in this debate as an administrator at UMassBoston,
City University of New York, and now N.U., says, "I am less impressed
with the argument that students are drinking a lot more today than I am
with the argument that the consequences of drinking are vastly different
for young people today than they were when I was in college." Freeland
points to two considerations in particular: first, with the hazards of
date rape, sexually transmitted diseases, and urban violence, "the
world has simply become a more dangerous place for students under the influence
of alcohol," he says. "The second thing is that the legal consequences
are much greater-society is much less tolerant today than it was."
Meanwhile, the kinds of alcohol-related incidents that flared up at
the university last spring raise some basic questions: Does Northeastern,
despite its efforts to control student drinking, have a "drinking
problem"? How does the university deal with student alcohol use and
abuse? Does its approach to these issues need to change?
As a resident assistant (ra) in smith hall, one of the university's
freshman dormitories, Kendra Connel has a close-up view of underage and
"problem" drinking by N.U. students. "I feel that it's fairly
high in a lot of halls," says Connel, a senior, who estimates that
she dealt with sixty alcohol-related infractions last year in Smith, which
has approximately 250 residents.
Some of the most influential recent research on college students' drinking-a
pair of studies directed by Henry Wechsler, a researcher at the Harvard
School of Public Health-also portrays Northeastern as a place where students
drink fairly heavily. A 1993 Wechsler survey of student drinking at 140
institutions nationwide yielded results that categorized N.U. as a "high-binge"
school: 51.1 percent of students here reported engaging in behavior that
Wechsler defines as binge drinking-that is, five or more drinks in a sitting
for men and four for women.
Yet by 1997, when Wechsler repeated his study, binge drinking reported
among N.U. students had fallen off enough (to 45.9 percent) to drop the
university into the "medium-binge" category. Meanwhile, a survey
of campus alcohol and drug use by the Core Institute at Southern Illinois
University suggests that college students at Northeastern and elsewhere
drink more moderately than most people have concluded from Wechsler's warnings
about the prevalence of bingeing. For students who responded to the Core
survey at 171 two- and four-year colleges for the years 1995 or 1996, the
average number of drinks per week was 5.1. Judy Phalen, program director
for Alcohol and Other Drug Education (AOD) at the university's Counseling
Center, reports that the comparable figure for Northeastern was 4.7. (The
same survey indicated that nineteen percent of N.U. students consume 10
or more drinks per week, while less than two percent report having 20 or
more.) These findings, while hardly qualifying the university for the Temperance
League, show that Northeastern is a fairly typical school when it comes
to student drinking.
President Freeland's examination of the issue of student drinking at
N.U. supports this interpretation. "By every impressionistic measure
that I can muster, including reports from community groups who have lived
around Northeastern over the years, the atmosphere today is night and day
over what it was ten or fifteen years ago," he says. "From what
the police tell us, to what I know is true on other campuses, I would say
that the situation at Northeastern is no worse than average, and I would
say probably a bit better than average."
Moreover, according to Matthew Chase, a senior who now serves as an
RA in one of N.U.'s upperclass dormitories (337 Huntington Avenue) and
has spent two years working in freshman halls, what student alcohol problem
does exist at N.U. "is mostly with the freshmen." Shannon Moran,
a senior who is now an RA in an upperclass residence hall (Willis) after
working in a freshman dorm last year, concurs with this widely held opinion,
adding, "I think co-op helps people grow up in their sophomore year."
Although there is little hard data available to support this view, administrators
who deal with alcohol offenses generally agree that most students who get
in trouble over alcohol do so in their first year. Jeanine Beratta, director
of student judicial affairs for the university, says that three-quarters
of the 1,500 cases that her office handles every year involve alcohol or
other drugs, and estimates that "ninety-seven percent of whom we discipline
are first-year students." (Of course, such figures may be partly explained
by the fact that freshmen are far more likely to live on campus than upperclassmen,
and thus stand a greater chance of getting caught for all but the most
flagrant kinds of violations.)
Beratta adds that "very few" students brought up on alcohol
or other drug charges are repeat offenders. At the Office of Alcohol and
Other Drug Education, Phalen also reports a low recidivism rate: of the
370 students who, in 199899, were sent to her mandatory class for
students who commit first-time, relatively minor alcohol violations, 52
had landed by year's end in a second class required of second-time offenders.
Yet despite such reassuring statistics and assertions, administrators
who deal with the consequences of student drinking at N.U. see no reason
for complacency. Student arrests for alcohol violations at Northeastern
have risen recently-from one in 1996 to twelve in 1997 to twenty-one in
1998-reflecting "a trend that has appeared on college campuses in
the United States in the last few years," says James Ferrier, N.U.'s
associate director of public safety. Ferrier also points to a rising tide
of alcohol abuse in America's junior highs and high schools that is only
beginning to wash over colleges and universities. "We sort of mirror
the population, I believe, as far as numbers of drinkers," says Pamela
Harris, coordinator of health promotion and planning at the university's
Lane Health Center. "And I think we still need to work on a paradigm
shift, not only at Northeastern but within society."
A casual observer might say that significant segments
of American society-including the social and occupational echelons to which
most college students aspire-have already undergone a "paradigm shift"
when it comes to alcohol. Mainstream beer producers now fight over market
share in response to declining consumption. Members of today's health-conscious
managerial and professional classes practically cite the New England Journal
of Medicine to justify a glass of merlot with dinner, while having that
glass of wine at a business lunch these days will get you suspected of
being a drunkard. Still, with experts estimating that thirty American college
students die as a result of alcohol abuse each year (not to mention the
untold incidence of other consequences ranging from violence to poor academic
performance), most colleges and universities consider students at particular
risk for problem behaviors related to drinking. At N.U., a comprehensive
set of policies and programs, developed since the late 1980s, aims to deal
with alcohol-related attitudes and behavior in a way that is both enlightened
and effective.
At a time when many colleges and universities are reacting to problems
with student drinking by banishing alcohol from campus altogether, Northeastern
attempts to steer a middle course between the laissez-faire attitudes that
predominated in the past and the current trend toward prohibition. While
permitting students of legal age to drink on campus (both at officially
sponsored events and in the upperclass residence halls), the university
combines guidance and discipline to try to walk a fine line between teaching
students to exercise judgment and enforcing norms of legal, safe, and civilized
behavior.
President Freeland explains the underlying rationale of N.U.'s alcohol
policy when he says, "Education here is not about creating a fantasy
world, a sort of academic Disneyland where students are off in some bubble
for four years, but it's rather about helping students, in controlled and
structured ways, to engage in the responsibilities of adult life . . .
That's something we're very proud of as an educational matter, and I extend
that directly into the realm of learning to live with alcohol or other
social temptations."
According to AOD's Phalen, N.U.'s approach to alcohol (and other drug)
education has evolved over the years in step with trends at other colleges
and universities. "The focus is on decision making and harm reduction
as opposed to the 'Just say no' stuff," she says, "because the
'Just say no' stuff doesn't work." The first campus-based programs
aimed at preventing student substance abuse (programs that were effectively
mandated by the federal government in 1989) did, indeed, borrow their approach
from the simplistic antidrug incantation popularized by former first lady
Nancy Reagan. After this initial phase, Phalen explains, prevention programs
began to concern themselves with "responsible drinking." "The
next step," she says, "is where we have been for a while, which
is what I call 'responsible decision making,' where the focus is on the
choice and not so much on the drinking."
These programs focused on decision making, Phalen points out, "have
been largely targeted toward individual behaviors: 'Are you making a good
choice? If no, what's getting in the way?' Those are the programs that
I still do in the residence halls, and essentially the goal is to get people
thinking about their individual behaviors." More recently, she relates,
there has been a trend of looking beyond individual choices to focus on
campus environments, real and perceived, and their influence on student
drinking. While the Core Institute survey and even Wechsler's studies (given,
for one thing, that Wechsler defines binge drinking rather loosely) imply
that most college students actually drink in moderation, students themselves
still tend to believe that most of their peers are bingeing. Meanwhile,
new research suggests that students who drink heavily often do so because
they believe this to be normal behavior in a college setting.
In view of such findings, a new "social norms" approach to
student alcohol education (pioneered by Michael Haines of the Northern
Illinois University Health Service) now aims to combat student alcohol
abuse by educating students about what their peers are actually doing.
Thus, while Phalen visits the residence halls to talk to students about
individual decision making regarding alcohol, her AOD office has begun
a marketing campaign designed to convince N.U. students that their peers,
on the whole, are sensible drinkers. Through advertisements in the Northeastern
News, signboards and flyers on campus, and a Counseling Center Web page
reporting the Core Institute survey findings for N.U., Phalen tries to
persuade her charges that Animal House, today, is more tired myth than
reality.
For that certain percentage of students who nonetheless will drink illicitly,
the university promulgates policies that take a tough line against alcohol-related
misconduct. Northeastern's Code of Conduct makes the illegal sale or illegal
distribution of alcohol-by students of drinking age to those below twenty-one,
for instance-punishable by suspension or expulsion from the university.
For illegal possession or consumption of alcohol, illegal alcohol parties
(either in the residence halls or off campus), and public drunkenness,
the code prescribes a "minimum sanction" of probation, referral
to campus police, community service, and referral to AOD. Finally, the
on-campus possession of unauthorized quantities of alcohol (that is, more
than one twelve-pack of beer or sixty-four ounces of wine or other alcohol
per person) by those of legal age warrants a letter of censure or reprimand
and referral to AOD, at a minimum, as does "possession or consumption
of alcoholic beverages in locations or under conditions prohibited by university
policy or by law."
In practice, university administrators explain, these rules can turn
out to be less stringent than they first appear. For example, a first-time
offense involving the illegal possession or consumption of alcohol will
not actually be referred to the university police, as this more serious
sanction is reserved for comparable violations involving marijuana or other
drugs. Similarly, first-time, comparatively minor alcohol offenses merit,
as an "educational sanction," only a one-hour AOD course known
as TRAC (Thinking Responsibly about Consumption); the same infractions
involving marijuana or other drugs get a three-session course with the
more heavy-handed acronym INSTEAD (Involuntary Students Educated about
Alcohol and Other Drugs). The Code of Conduct's careful wording also allows
administrators to punish illegal possession or consumption of alcohol itself
with varying degrees of severity.
Still, the Code of Conduct creates a framework that empowers the university
to react sternly to serious or repeated misconduct involving alcohol-and
not only within the legal precincts of the university. While N.U., as the
code states, "cannot assume responsibility for illegal alcohol parties
off campus," Dean of Student Life Ronald Martel notes that "students
caught in an off-campus apartment having a keg party suffer the same consequences
as a student living on campus would." To back up this principle, N.U.'s
Division of Public Safety has worked closely with the Boston police for
the past ten years to enforce both the law and university policy on alcohol-related
misconduct by students living in private apartments or other off-campus
housing. Illustrating the long arm of Northeastern law, one of the three
students arrested in connection with the incident on Hemenway Street last
June was promptly expelled from the school by the University Court; the
other two, whose cases are pending, face possible suspension or expulsion;
and the fifteen students (all first-time offenders) who received citations
from the police have been placed on probation, given thirty hours of community
service, and referred to AOD (although three are appealing).
As research on student drinking has shown, one group particularly at
risk for alcohol abuse is members of fraternities and sororities. At Northeastern,
a set of "Greek standards" enacted a decade ago spells out the
university's expectations that social life in its fraternities and sororities
will not descend to the level of Animal House, and provides the basis for
disciplinary action against these organizations. Since 1996, in fact, two
fraternities-Gamma Phi Kappa and Tau Kappa Epsilon-have been suspended
by the university for serving alcohol to minors. (A third fraternity, Phi
Kappa Tau, was disbanded by its national chapter in 1995 following an alcohol-fueled
party at which members reportedly destroyed their apartment.)
Last may, as the alleged rape in melvin hall was sending shock waves
across the campus, some administrators, residential staff, and students
expressed the view that such incidents, however regrettable, can never
be entirely prevented. While this is undoubtedly true, the known facts
of the case make it clear that flagrant violations of university policy
paved the way for disaster. The two accused rapists, their victim, and
six other Northeastern students who were drinking in a dorm room that night
(the victim has admitted to consuming eight beers, and one of her alleged
attackers to having sixteen) were all freshmen, and were all underage.
Approximately four hours before the alleged rape, an RA broke up the party
and confiscated a thirty-pack and a twelve-pack of beer that had found
their way into the building even though university rules entirely prohibit
alcohol in freshman residence halls.
How do some freshmen get around the rules? "I've seen students
carrying in two or three thirty-packs of Icehouse, right through the front
door, and the receptionist lets them in," asserts Terry Pollock, a
senior who is now vice president for finance of the Resident Student Association
and has lived in university housing since he was a freshman. RAs, in turn,
defend themselves and their colleagues against accusations of laxness,
and point out that, while it is necessary to enforce the rules, college
dorms cannot be run as police states. "Unfortunately, we cannot control
every single person, everything that goes on behind closed doors,"
says Shannon Moran.
At least one person thinks that Northeastern can do a much better job
of controlling what goes on in the dorms, however: M. L. Langlie, director
of residential life since last October. While spending a night on rounds
with the RAs in the residence halls last year, Langlie discovered "a
loophole you could drive a Mack truck through" in the rule prohibiting
alcohol in freshman dormitories. "I was watching students walking
out of the residence halls with empty backpacks," she says. "And
we have not had it posted that we have the right to inspect all bags entering
the building. So students would return with backpacks in the shape of a
twelve-pack. What's happened is that if an RA says, 'Can I see what you've
got?' and the student says no, the RAs feel like they have no recourse."
Beginning this fall, Langlie has vowed, signs in every residence-hall
reception area will make it clear that staff are authorized to inspect
bags and to deny admittance to anyone who refuses inspection. (The Student
Government Association and Resident Student Association are protesting
the plan.) This is not the only way in which Langlie believes the university
could put more teeth into its policies.
"What the RAs have been clear with me about," she says, "is
that we have a 'zero tolerance' policy, but our practice is not 'zero tolerance.'
" A major problem with the university's disciplinary process, she
contends, is that "students find they have a lot of chances. We have
2,500 freshmen in the residence halls, and one of the things people will
say to you is, 'Our return [recidivism] rate is low.' What I'm saying is,
I don't have time to go through 2,500 first chances. Students [currently]
get a letter of probation and have to go to an educational program-that's
not bad, but it's not enough. They put the letter of probation on their
door with a happy face on it. So now this is bragging rights. Have we changed
behavior? No. We've reinforced behavior."
One of Langlie's ideas for sanctions that might, in her view, actually
change alcohol-related behavior is to start notifying parents after a student's
first offense. (Current university policy in this regard is to wait until
the third violation.) In proposing such a measure, Langlie cites Lawrence
Kohlberg and other theorists of moral development to argue that adolescents
need very explicit, black-and-white rules, enforced by serious penalties,
in order to learn responsible behavior.
Langlie's get-tough position on these matters is endorsed by RAs and
other students who question the effectiveness of the TRAC and INSTEAD courses.
"I don't see the students taking [AOD courses] as being serious,"
says RA Matthew Chase. "If you look at the papers that are written,
I think they're something that's done at eight o'clock in the morning to
hand in at nine." One student who has been to TRAC highlights an inherent
ambiguity in these liberal-style educational programs with their vaguely
menacing names. "As a punitive measure, [TRAC] misses the point,"
says Troy Cumbo, a junior. "It felt like an emotional jam session-it
didn't feel like anything that drove home the point of abstinence."
AOD's Phalen argues that teaching "abstinence" is precisely
not the point of TRAC, which actually concerns itself with "choice"
and "values clarification." She also states that students find
attending her classes burdensome and that they "do learn a little"
while they are there. Yet she admits to having no definitive way of gauging
these courses' effectiveness: "There isn't a lot of data to support
[the argument] that these kinds of programs change people's behavior in
the long run," she says.
Still, Phalen and other administrators make an attractive case for offering
alcohol and drug education not merely as punishment but as an integral
part of the undergraduate curriculum. Langlie, for example, strongly advocates
freshman seminars, taught in the colleges, that would integrate material
on personal development and deal with subjects such as drugs and alcohol.
Such views reflect another trend that is becoming visible around the country,
as more and more colleges and universities recommit themselves to the old
humanistic ideal of educating not just the intellect but the whole person.
As Karen Rigg, Northeastern's vice president for student affairs, expresses
it, "Those of us in student affairs, and I think many people at universities
in general, have always tried to see the student as a whole person, and
talk about the university experience in terms not just of the education
of the mind but of personal development and social development. And I think
if you look at it that way, you have to look at anything that is a barrier
or inhibitor to moving ahead on that. And I think that's one way of focusing
on alcohol." She also notes that, when it comes to student alcohol
use, education alone will never do-not only because the law prohibits certain
behavior but also because the university wants to be a community with clearly
recognized standards of conduct.
Is notifying parents of a minor, first-time alcohol
offense an effective way to change behavior, or a means of infantilizing
students who must learn to live away from home? Does a freshman who drinks
in a dorm room need "values clarification," or the bureaucratic
equivalent of a good, swift kick in the rear? President Freeland lays out
the context in which such questions are and will continue to be debated.
"My starting point for questions of alcohol policy at Northeastern,"
Freeland says, "has to do with what Northeastern is fundamentally
about as an educational institution. And in my mind, what we are fundamentally
about is helping students manage the transition between adolescence and
adulthood in the context of real-world experience." In the real world
of personal freedom within all manner of limits, young people will find
that there are both choices and sanctions, values and rules, and that it
isn't always easy to walk the line where they come together. If N.U., in
trying to help them get their footing, must do a little more groping of
its own, students should ultimately benefit from this hands-on learning.
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