Football season is a time to sport your favorite team’s colors and cheer on the players from the stands. But for many college students, it’s also a time to drink what can be a dangerous amount of alcohol. We talk to Bridge magazine reporter Ron French and Dennis Martell, Health Education Services Coordinator for Olin Health Center at MSU.
For a lot of East Lansing residents, fall is almost synonymous with football. While the leaves are turning red and yellow, seas of students and fans are donning green and white to cheer on their beloved Spartans. And for some, football is synonymous with alcohol and lots of it.
Colleges and universities in Michigan and across the country have struggled to reduce binge drinking on their campuses. And that has serious consequences. What are Michigan schools doing to curb dangerous drinking? And is it working? Bridge magazine recently sought to answer that question in their series on college drinking.
Current State talks with Ron French of Bridge magazine, and Dennis Martell, Health Education Services Coordinator for Olin Health Center who heads up MSU’s efforts to stem alcohol abuse on campus.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Are students drinking more than they used to?
MARTELL: What has changed in the culture is what students drink and how they drink. We have less students drinking more, and that's really what we've been focusing on. The culture has shifted from beer to very exclusive types of liquor. Ron came to campus and I showed him one of the things that we educate students about which is called "Know Your Solo."
Back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people have red solo cups and they would drink, you know, a beer from it. Now that they don't drink beer, they're filling those solo cups to a dangerous level. We have students come to "Know Your Solo" and we have them pour what they think is a shot, and they will pour anything from three to eight shots in a Solo cup thinking it's one drink. So the culture has changed, and what we did with the action team is we decided to challenge the high-risk environment of drinking rather than just going after alcohol.
Ron French on the risks of heavy drinking for some, not all, college students
FRENCH: I think Michigan State's number of the percent of students that say they drink has gone down from I think 78 percent to 71 percent, so that's a notable decrease. I think the number who binge drink are also down. The dangers for those who are drinking at a high level are really pretty astounding. Let me give you a couple of data points here. At U of M, one out of eight women students say they have been the victim of unwanted sexual contact while they've been too drunk to do anything about it. At Northern Michigan, one out of four students drank so much at some point in the past year they couldn't remember where they were or what they did. So yeah, that's the minority of the students. But it's a health issue for those students.
Dennis Martell on strategies for changing extreme drinking culture on campus
MARTELL: You know 70% of our incoming class of freshman have already drank. We know that from the 11th to 12th grade studies. So students aren't finding alcohol here. They're discovering that they have to make really conscious decisions about how to use it. So, it's very difficult. We don't just use education. We use social norming, we use harm reduction, and we use environmental management to get the message to students. Our social norming program treats students with respect. We don't tell them what to do. We tell them what they actually do because we're trying to change the perceptions. So, as we change those perceptions, the culture starts to change about what actually happens at MSU. You know, back in 2000, MSU was probably known as kind of a party school. Now when we ask students why they chose MSU, less than 4 percent choose MSU as a party school.
