By Betsa Marsh

After a century of moving pictures, modern imagination often scans in fast forward.

Take the collegiate iconography of alcohol and academics.

First, bobbed and brilliantined students clink martini classes to throbbing jazz.

Skip forward 50 years, and bobby-soxed and tennis-sweatered teens clank beer steins to bouncy rock 'n' roll.

Flash forward another half century, and pierced and tattooed students limbo backward under a hose, funnel, and beer pitcher to thudding rap.

In our super-sizing culture, campus alcohol use has ballooned, too. Is this the new higher education?

The scope of alcohol abuse on American campuses is sobering: By their own responses, 31 percent of college students could be diagnosed as abusing alcohol, and 6 percent could be considered alcohol-dependent in the past 12 months, according to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

More than 97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape - an estimated one in four or five. Another 100,000 reported being too intoxicated to know if they consented to sex.

Nearly 700,000 students between 18 and 24 have been assaulted by another student who has been drinking. Some 600,000 are injured under the influence, and 1,400 die each year from alcohol-related, unintentional injuries.

Excessive, often underage drinking on campus is a problem that some experts have despaired of solving. Since many students' own families, as well as the prevailing culture, view college drinking as a societal rite of passage, college administrators sometimes question any advance their programs can make against such a tide.

But Miami President Jim Garland has staked a beachhead in the University's assault on alcohol abuse. In his August State of the University address, he made curbing alcohol abuse one of Miami's three key challenges.

"We have made a huge investment over the years in creating a stimulating and healthful non-curricular environment for our under-graduates," he said. "But despite our best efforts, we have not been able to rein in or even significantly slow down the student misuse of alcoholic beverages."

Discussing Miami's aggressive "three strikes and you're out" policy, Garland zeroed in on the past year: 1,191 citations to students who violated the alcohol policies - 8 percent of the student body. Most first-time offenders were freshman males.

Depending on the severity of the first offense and after any second alcohol violation, a student is required to complete a comprehensive substance abuse assessment. Last year: 279 students.

In spite of that intervention, 17 students received a final citation and were suspended.

Oxford reported 32 sexual assaults, most involving Miami students. A student was nearly killed when a train struck his car at a railroad crossing. Three students lost their lives in a fire that destroyed their off-campus house.

"While it is an overstatement to say that alcohol caused these tragedies, it is certainly clear that the misuse of alcohol facilitated the tragedies," Garland said later.

"Many members of the student body simply aren't owning up to the role alcohol plays in devastating the lives of many of their classmates and, in some cases, taking lives.

"They like drinking, they like the social consequences of drinking, and they aren't willing to acknowledge that it can be terrible for some of their classmates. Partly it's a matter of maturity, but also a lack of empathy for people different from themselves. It's hard for them to understand that they have to constrain their behavior so others don't suffer.

"We're not trying to turn students into teetotalers. We are trying to show them alcohol in moderation in a social setting is our goal."

Tackling alcohol abuse is part of the president's vision for Miami's upcoming bicentennial.

"First in 2009 is about enhancing the academic environment, and alcohol undermines the academic agenda. Miami is not a party school, and the students, by and large, work very hard. But we want to raise the academic bar even further."

But how to get there in an alcohol-infused culture? "No one really knows what to do, including Miami," the president acknowledged. "We try things and sometimes they work a little."

He has formed a committee to look into creating sanctions as deterrents, discussing social alternatives, and using the academic structure of the University, such as more Friday classes, to limit drinking.

Here are some current and suggested solutions to alcohol abuse, with responses from Miami administrators, students, alumni, a bar owner, and parents.

Provide education

At Miami, all incoming first-year students are required to take AlcoholEdu, an individualized computer class to help them make decisions about alcohol use. Students who don't complete the program can't register for classes.

After the pilot program, 92 percent of students surveyed "paid attention to the program, and 72 percent would recommend it to another student," said Karen Murray, director of health education. "Students who thought about the program used more pro-active behaviors to keep themselves safer.

"We don't think this is an inoculation. The overall culture has to do a lot more."

As school started this year, 90 Oxford residents, including Miami staff, from vice presidents down, "went walkabout," visiting most off-campus houses with information about off-campus living, invitations to campus and community events, a box of cookies, and two plastic cups. One cup featured fire safety tips

and one marked off 12 ounces of alcohol - significantly less than the 20-ounce cups favored by students.

"They were surprised by how small it was," said Richard Nault, vice president for student affairs. "I'm not sure we've done everything we can do with alcohol education."

Stiffen penalties

"If a student parks in the wrong spot, it's a $50 fine, but there's no fine for a drinking violation," Garland said. "What message are we sending about what's really important to the University?

"I'm proposing that we start thinking of rule violation in terms of deterrence." In his address, Garland floated the idea of a $1,000 fine or suspension for using a fake ID.

Student Body President Steve Rayo agrees that it's important for the University to show consequences - to a point. "But extreme measures? People will try all the harder not to get caught. I don't think fines are the most effective way of accomplishing the goal."

Nault agrees. "A lot of us will want to debate sanctions. Fines are a very complex issue. Every student will contest every violation, and we have up to 1,000 cases a year. In the current climate, we would probably have parents and lawyers here, and we would need two to three times the hearing staff."

Involve faculty

"On Green Beer Day [before spring break], some professors give in and cancel class, while some give pop quizzes or schedule exams that day," Rayo said. "It depends how the professors see their role."

"I don't want to give the impression that faculty are encouraging misbehavior by students," Garland said. "But I have had a few reports of faculty members being irresponsible, and they need to be held accountable."

Enlist parents

"Parents wouldn't give 12-year-olds the car keys so they can practice driving," Murray said. "Then why give them bottles of beer in the basement?"

Garland is blunter. "Too many parents say, ‘All college students drink. Why are you making such a big deal about it? Why are you singling out my child?'

"Too many send their kids off to school and say, ‘Now, Miami, you deal with the problem.' That's not the way it works. They must accept responsibility, even if it means pulling their child out of school and sending him to a substance abuse program."

As freshmen pack for school, parents have more impact than they may think, according to recent research. In one experiment, parents received 30-page pamphlets outlining conversations about alcohol with their teens; researchers checked that the parents and students had talked. The freshmen were surveyed periodically and reported being significantly more temperate in their drinking, smoking, and sexual habits than the control group, whose parents didn't receive the pamphlets.

Jacquie Smith didn't need talking points to prompt her discussion with son Brandon, now a 20-year-old senior sociology and history major.

"Every month before he went to Miami, I gave him the alcohol, drug, and sex speech," said Smith from her home in Lexington, Ky. "I'm a nurse and very open. I said, ‘You have to protect yourself.' "

As chair of the Parents Council's communications committee, Smith considers that "maybe education has to start with parents. We need to explain that 1,400 students die every year [of alcohol-related causes].

"Some parents want to be their children's best friend; kids want parents. You can't permit your child to do illegal things because you want to be friends. We instilled just enough fear in Brandon to think, ‘Ooh, what will my mom and dad think of me?' "

That might have been precisely Brandon's thought when he called home, crying, from the Oxford Police paddy wagon. The 18-year-old sophomore had opened an off-campus door to a police officer responding to a noise complaint. Asked what he had in his cup, he answered honestly: beer.

Brandon paid $250 for his substance abuse class and volunteered at Planned Parenthood for community service.

"It taught him a huge lesson," his mother said. "He's not perfect, he's a teenager. Their brains don't always think maturely and a lot of parents need to realize that. Our teenagers rely on our maturity and expertise."

Engage alumni

Internist Dr. Brent Bader sees Miami's alcohol abuse problem up close, from the alcohol poisoning he treats in the hospital emergency room to the vandalism his uptown office suffers from drunken students.

"I was at Miami when the legal age was 18 and we could drink 3.2 beer," the 1981 alumnus recalled. "When I turned 21, the law changed to 21, and the drinking pattern changed.

"Students aren't satisfied with a couple of beers anymore. Now it's liquor and competition drinking to see who can get the drunkest."

Although Bader doesn't foresee a shift back to 18, he suggests that perhaps "speakers who have suffered because of their drinking behaviors, or family members who have lost someone because of alcohol" might be able to reach students. "And reach alumni about bringing alcohol into frat houses."

Crack down on fraternities

Animal House seared images of blotto frat boys into the collective memory. "Toga! Toga!" Funny, but true?

"I'd like to say [fraternity drinking] is a stereotype, but I can't say it's not true," Rayo acknowledged. "But I think it's really that when 40 guys at a frat house get together to drink, it's just much more visible." The senior political science and economics major is a member of Kappa Alpha, not one of Miami's four alcohol-free fraternities.

"Personally, being Greek has not affected the amount I drink." Rayo didn't drink until he was 21; now it's Molson when he's buying, whiskey and Coke on someone else's tab.

Although Rayo may be unaffected, studies have tracked higher alcohol consumption among fraternity and sorority members than non-Greek students.

"Greeks are aware of their image," said Steve Dealph, director of the Cliff Alexander Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and Leadership. Miami's fraternities and sororities now voluntarily require new members to complete Choices, a two-hour alcohol education class.

Like many students and staff, Dealph eschews the word "binge," preferring "excessive or abusive drinking. It's not so much the number of drinks, it's identifying what we know as really, really bad behavior."

Work with the community

For eight years, Miami's Office of Health Education has collaborated with the Coalition for a Healthy Community-Oxford Area, a group of Miami staff, faculty, students, and community members working together to change the environment in which high-risk drinking occurs.

"The mayor of Oxford [Jerome Conley] is in his third year in the coalition, and we have representatives from the local hospital, school boards, police force, and chamber of commerce," Murray said.

Conley is also one of the facilitators trained to teach the Choices curriculum to new Greek members.

"I think our students are amazed," Murray said, "that the mayor cares enough about them to come out on a Saturday morning, in the dead of winter, with ice on the roads, to talk to them about alcohol."

Clamp down on bars

"Our efforts to work with uptown bars have been mixed," Garland said. "Mac & Joe's has been very supportive, but others boycott any effort. We don't have any legal jurisdiction, and even if we cajole them to help, we run the risk of driving students off campus. Almost every solution has unintended consequences."

And almost every solution encounters resistance. Todd Hollenbaugh '73, who owns Mac & Joe's as well as the Circle Bar and Steinkeller, lobbied city council to pass an ordinance requiring two IDs for people to get into bars, a policy that almost cost him Mac & Joe's when he started it in 1995. He was told the state would have to mandate the change.

When he suggested students be required to register with the city for keg license stickers, something they do at the University of Virginia and in other college towns, he was called a "beer Nazi." By registering, party throwers grant police permission to come on their property to make sure all kegs have licenses. While there, police can identify underage drinkers.

Not surprisingly, Hollenbaugh thinks the problem with alcohol isn't at the uptown bars, or at least most of them, but at the "rampant" parties in off-campus houses.

"These kids go to these porch parties, and there are 300 kids, and nobody's in control. You see it all the time. Nobody knows anybody, nobody's checking IDs, there's no security, there's no control over how much alcohol is served. What kind of alcohol is served. There's just no control."

Offer non-alcoholic activities

Some students are creating alcohol- and drug-free programs to counter the hard-drinking image of campus life. At St. Louis University, the answer is W.H.A.T. - Wanting Healthy Alcohol-free Thrills. At The College of New Jersey, it's P.E.A.N.U.T.S. - Planning Exciting Activities for a Never-Ending Utopia for TCNJ Students.

At Miami, Student Affairs presents After Dark, a series of movies, casino nights, and fireworks on weekends that last until 1 a.m.

"Students believe that alcohol is a critical ingredient if you are going to behave socially," Nault said. "I hold events at my house that have no alcohol, so students see it's possible to be social without it."

Lower the drinking age

After a lobbying push by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other groups in the 1980s, Congress tied state highway funds to a law raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21. By 1988 all 50 states had complied.

One unexpected consequence: driving campus drinking underground.

In the 1990s, experts saw a shift in college drinking to more hard liquor, drunk furtively in dorm rooms and off-campus houses. Students call it "pregaming," drinking as much liquor as possible before heading out to parties.

As author Barrett Seaman researched his book Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You, he saw one freshman female drink 22 shots of vodka in her dorm room with friends. He tracked 70 cases of student alcohol poisoning at Harvard before Thanksgiving, and 300 such deaths a year across the country.

Seaman recommends returning the drinking age to 18. After a freshman splurge, most would settle down to manageable levels, he predicts.

In a recent Time essay, Seaman wrote, "We should let the pregamers come out of their dorm rooms so that they can learn to handle alcohol like the adults we hope and expect them to be."

At Miami, President Garland is looking at a combination of education and deterrence to curb alcohol abuse. Plus an appeal to two essential qualities often just evolving in the college-age psyche: maturity and empathy.

"Most students know drinking poses no harm for themselves, but that doesn't mean it's not harmful for some," Garland said. "It's like the taxpayers who say, ‘I pay enough taxes. I'm not going to pay another dollar in taxes because I don't have children in school.' But then they vote for the school levy because they see that there's a larger good to be served. Students need to see there's a larger good to be served by constraining their own behavior."

Betsa Marsh is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in publications throughout North America. She is based in Cincinnati. Photos by Tony Amato.

The committee looking into limiting drinking at Miami would like to hear from you. If you have comments and suggestions, please write to alcoholfeedback@muohio.edu.

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