[Senate Hearing 107-553]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-553
UNDER THE INFLUENCE: THE BINGE DRINKING EPIDEMIC ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 15, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
Kiersten Todt Coon, Professional Staff Member
Richard A. Hertling, Minority Staff Director
W. Baxter Lee, Legislative Aide to the Minority
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Carper............................................... 34
Prepared statement:
Senator Bunning.............................................. 39
WITNESSES
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D., Acting Director, National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes
of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services........ 3
Ralph W. Hingson, Sc.D., M.P.H., Professor and Associate Dean for
Research, Boston University School of Public Health............ 5
Mark S. Goldman, Ph.D., Director, Alcohol and Substance Abuse
Research Institute, University of South Florida................ 7
Daniel P. Reardon, D.D.S., Parent................................ 18
John D. Welty, Ed.D., President, California State University,
Fresno......................................................... 20
Robert F. Nolan, Chief of Police, Town of Hamden, Connecticut.... 22
Drew Hunter, Executive Director, The BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer
Education Network.............................................. 25
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Goldman, Mark S., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 49
Hingson, Ralph W., Sc.D., M.P.H.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Hunter, Drew:
Testimony.................................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 81
Kington, Raynard S., M.D., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Nolan, Chief Robert F.:
Testimony.................................................... 22
Prepared statement........................................... 77
Reardon, Daniel P., D.D.S.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 56
Welty, John D., Ed.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 20
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 58
Appendix
Chart entitled ``Task Force Materials'' submitted by Dr. Kington. 85
Chart entitled ``College Students U.S.'' submitted by Dr. Hingson 86
C.D. Mote, Jr., President, University of Maryland, prepared
statement with attachments..................................... 87
Catherine Bath, Program Director, Security On Campus, Inc.,
prepared statement............................................. 99
UNDER THE INFLUENCE: THE BINGE DRINKING EPIDEMIC ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman and Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. Good
morning. Thanks to all of you for being here.
Today we are here to talk about a very serious public
health problem and our message is a simple but serious one,
which is that alcohol abuse on college campuses has reached a
point where it is far more destructive than most people realize
and today it threatens too many of our young people. College
students need to know that if they party to excess, they could
die, and college administrators need to know that intervention
is the only way to get this out-of-control behavior under
control.
I came to this concern, which led to this hearing today,
from simply observing, listening, and watching what was
happening in my home State of Connecticut. Within the last 12
months, six college students have died in alcohol-related
incidents. Eighty-five alcohol-related arrests were made during
the University of Connecticut's spring weekend this year, and
last week, Trinity College suspended one of its oldest
fraternities.
The numbers here are alarming. The rate of death and injury
is extremely alarming, especially given Connecticut's
relatively small size, but I have come to understand that this
is not an anomaly. It is not unusual. Connecticut is, sadly,
just a part of a nationwide trend among college students to get
as drunk as possible as quickly as possible, often with
devastating effects.
Obviously, I know that many people consider drinking to be
just another rite of passage for many college students and I
can even remember my own college days and such behavior. But
drinking is not the issue here. What we are concerned about is
drinking in excess, binge drinking, drinking one's self to
death. This type of behavior is not a harmless initiation into
adulthood and is not a sport. It is reckless behavior, toxic
conduct that can cut young lives short.
We are fortunate to have with us today the Acting Director
of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,
which has recently published a powerful study illustrating the
seriousness of the problem of heavy episodic drinking on
American college campuses. The study found that while the
proportion of non-drinking students has actually risen, so too
have extreme forms of drinking. The upshot is that drinking by
college students between the ages of 18 and 24 contributes to
1,400 deaths a year, 70,000 cases of sexual assault or rape,
and 500,000 injuries.
Let me repeat those numbers because they are, to me,
stunning. Each year, college drinking contributes to 1,400
deaths, almost half the number of lives lost in the terrorist
attacks against us on September 11, 70,000 sexual assaults or
rapes, and 500,000 injuries.
Additionally, the Surgeon General has identified binge
drinking among college students as a major public health
problem. About 40 percent of students apparently binge drink,
according to one study, and that is defined as five or more
drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks for women. One
recent survey found that 20 percent of students reported
binging more than three times over a 2-week period.
Most binge drinkers are freshmen. Most are men. Most attend
schools where fraternities, sororities, or athletics dominate
campus life, and curiously, and to me interestingly, the
National Institute also found that most binge drinking occurs
in the Northeast. That is, more of it occurs proportionately in
the Northeast than any other section of the country.
Clearly, the culture of high-risk drinking is a problem
that touches not just a few students and their families or a
few campuses but entire communities, and in that sense, the
Nation.
Edward Malloy, the President of the University of Notre
Dame, Father Malloy, who co-chairs the National Institute on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Task Force on College Drinking,
has said that even though ``a minority of college students
engage in high-risk drinking, all students and their parents,
faculty, and members of the surrounding community suffer the
negative consequences of alcohol abuse, and that includes
assault, vandalism, and traffic accidents.''
So our obvious question is, what is being done about this?
In my opinion, based on what I have learned to date, not enough
is being done. Some colleges are actively working to revise
their alcohol policies. Others are struggling with policy
changes. But, frankly, from what I can see thus far, too many
more are denying that a problem even exists.
I paid a very encouraging visit to the University of
Connecticut campus in Storrs on Monday, where I heard of an
aggressive new program that is directed at this problem. And,
there are some other colleges that are implementing similar
programs as well. For example, the California State University
system is a model of intervention. After the alcohol overdose
of a freshman fraternity pledge, the California State system
adopted a comprehensive set of policies to reduce alcohol abuse
among students, which includes educational programs, training,
intervention, and treatment. The California State University
system, I think, should be commended for understanding that to
sit on the sidelines is to await the worst, including the death
of more students.
More colleges and universities need to be implementing
tougher alcohol policies and working with communities and local
law enforcement to enforce minimum drinking age laws, to
increase enforcement at campus events where excessive drinking
is promoted, and to inform incoming students and their parents
about alcohol policies and penalties.
I do not know, as we begin this hearing, whether there is
any appropriate legislative response from Congress or State
legislatures to this public health problem. In the first
instance, we are holding this hearing to educate the Committee,
but also in that sense to educate the public and, hopefully, to
engender action and reaction from students, from parents, from
faculty, and from college and university administrators that
will save lives.
As the research shows, excessive alcohol consumption
threatens the health and safety of students and disturbs and
threatens the lives of those who live in communities
surrounding the campuses. So we have got to redouble our
efforts to bring this kind of alcohol consumption under
control, to provide students with the tools to make more
informed decisions so that we save the lives of as many
students as possible.
We have two panels of witnesses today. The first are people
who have done research and work in the field and we are
delighted that they are with us. Dr. Mark Goldman is the
Director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Research Institute
at the University of South Florida. Dr. Ralph Hingson is
professor and Associate Dean of Research at the Boston
University School of Public Health. Dr. Raynard Kington is the
Acting Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
Dr. Kington, I would like to begin with you. We have your
and all the other witnesses' prepared statements, for which we
thank you. They are very well done and very helpful. We will
enter them fully in the record and I ask that you proceed for
approximately 5 minutes. We have a light system here which will
let you know when you have a minute to go. If you have a little
more than a minute, do not fear that we will close the mike
because we want to hear you out. Anyway, thank you for being
here and good morning. We welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF RAYNARD S. KINGTON, M.D., PH.D.,\1\ ACTING
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM,
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND
HUMAN SERVICES
Dr. Kington. Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chairman. My
name is Raynard Kington. I am Acting Director of the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, also known as NIAAA,
of the National Institutes of Health. Thank you for inviting me
here to discuss an extremely important public health issue,
excessive and high-risk drinking among students at our Nation's
colleges and universities.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Kington appears in the Appendix
on page 40.
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Last month, NIAAA's Task Force on College Drinking released
some important new data. You may have seen the troubling
statistics detailing dangerous drinking behavior by college
students and its consequences both for drinkers and those who
do not drink but must suffer the results of others drinking. We
see the harm caused by excessive drinking by college students;
it is profound. As you noted, the deaths, the injuries,
assaults, and sexual assaults are very troubling.
The scientific evidence of the size of the problem is only
reinforced by the regular press coverage of deaths on college
campuses throughout the country. For example, the news stories
in the past several months have reported on tragic deaths of
students at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and the
University of Maryland, in particular. These deaths highlight
the consequences of college drinking for families and for
colleges and universities and for the peers and friends of
these students.
What did not receive as much attention in the press
coverage of the report is what can be done by communities,
college presidents, parents, students, and others. The task
force did not want to identify another major health problem
without focusing on ways of addressing the problem.
The task force, as you noted, chaired by Dr. Goldman and
the University of Notre Dame President Father Edward Malloy,
was formed in 1998 by the National Advisory Council on Alcohol
Abuse and Alcoholism amid growing concern about college
drinking and the need to fill the gaps in our knowledge base
regarding effective interventions. The task force was charged
with examining all scientific data, commissioning studies to
fill the gaps in our knowledge, and recommending research-based
solutions.
The report moves beyond the sheer number of college
students engaged in high-risk drinking and focuses on the
tremendous overall societal burden created by the problem. We
also provide tools to help college presidents address the
problem.
The task force was unique in many ways. It was the first
project of this breadth and depth to bring together college
presidents, researchers, and college and high school students.
It is the first NIH report on college drinking, producing 24
commissioned papers on all aspects of this issue. In addition
to the lead publication by Dr. Hingson, who is with us today,
in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 18 of those papers were
published in a special supplement to that journal.
It is the first report to offer research-based
recommendations to college presidents. The task force also
produced a variety of products noted on the board that reach
out to and address the needs and interests of a wide range of
audiences, including college presidents, researchers, parents,
college students, and peer educators. We launched a new
website, www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov, which includes
full-text versions of all the products plus other useful
information. Since April 9, when the report was released, the
site has logged over 1.2 million hits, another measure of
public interest.
Finally, the task force sets forth a comprehensive research
agenda to ensure that future interventions are also based on
scientific evidence. We are currently spending approximately $7
million to study these issues with an additional $8 million
proposed over the next 2 fiscal years.
As we discuss the problem, we need to be very clear about
one thing. While many college students do not misuse alcohol
and many do not drink at all, a culture of high-risk drinking
prevails on many campuses. Some have suggested that drinking
has always been a part of the college tradition and always will
be, but high-risk drinking and its often tragic consequences
are preventable. We refuse to accept a single alcohol-related
death, a single assault, a single case of date rape as
inevitable.
As a result of the task force, we now know not only how
injurious college drinking is to our sons and daughters, but
also that there are steps that we can take on our campuses and
in our communities to address the problem today, even as we
continue to learn more about the problem and its solution.
Is our work done? Absolutely not. We are planning to
conduct regional workshops around the country. One of the task
force presidents, Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce of the University of
Puget Sound, will host the first of these regional workshops
next fall. Dr. Robert Carothers, President of the University of
Rhode Island, has been invited to host a regional meeting for
the New England States. We have produced additional brochures
and other information for different audiences, such as high
school guidance counselors and community groups.\1\
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\1\ Chart entitled ``Task Force Materials'' appears in the Appendix
on page 85.
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We will expand research collaborations with universities,
such as a project we are funding that you noted with 16
campuses in the California State system, jointly funded by the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
SAMHSA. We will also seek to increase our coordination with
other Federal agencies, including the Department of Education,
SAMHSA, and other entities, such as the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation.
This is just the beginning of what promises to be a long-
term effort. Changing the culture does not come quickly or
easily. We urge all college and university presidents to apply
the recommendations of the report. NIAAA is sending the report
and all related materials to every college and university in
the country. We challenge society to no longer ignore the
consequences of drinking on our Nation's campuses. Thank you
again for inviting me.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Doctor. That was an
excellent beginning. Now, Dr. Hingson.
TESTIMONY OF RALPH W. HINGSON, Sc.D., M.P.H.,\2\ PROFESSOR AND
ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH, BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC
HEALTH
Dr. Hingson. Thank you. I am Dr. Ralph Hingson. I am the
Associate Dean for Research at the Boston University School of
Public Health.
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\2\ The prepared statement of Dr. Hingson appears in the Appendix
on page 44.
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What I would like to do this morning is first review some
of the methods used in a paper commissioned by the task force
to look at the magnitude of alcohol-related mortality and
morbidity among college students ages 18 to 24 and then offer
some suggestions based on the review that we did of the
scientific literature about what types of intervention can work
to address the problem. Certainly, there is no silver bullet
and there is a lot that we need to learn above and beyond what
we have already seen, but the good news is that there is a lot
that we can do with what we know already.
First of all, to derive the estimates of the magnitude of
the problem, we tried to integrate across multiple data sets.
We looked at the U.S. Department of Transportation Fatality
Analysis Reporting System, which looks at motor vehicle
alcohol-related crash deaths, the Centers for Disease Control
mortality files, the U.S. Department of Education college
enrollment data, U.S. Census Bureau data on the number of 18-
to 24-year-olds in the United States, a review published in
1999 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, authored by Gordon
Smith et al., looking at alcohol involvement in injury
deaths.\1\ This was a review over a 20-year period of over 300
medical examiner studies published in the United States in the
scientific literature.
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\1\ Chart entitled ``College Students U.S.'' appears in the
Appendix on page 86.
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We also looked at three national surveys, the Centers for
Disease Control College Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted in
1995, the 1999 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol
Survey, and the 1999 National Household Survey of Drug Abuse.
That survey was particularly helpful because it looked at over
19,000 respondents ages 18 to 24, of whom nearly 7,000 were
college students. So we were able to compare 18- to 24-year-
olds in college with those not in college.
You have already mentioned some of the results. We estimate
1,400 alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths each year.
The bulk of those, 1,100, are traffic deaths. In addition, we
projected based on the surveys and given the population of
college students that 2.1 million college students every year
drive under the influence of alcohol, 500,000 are injured
because of drinking, 400,000 have unprotected sex.
I think a particularly startling statistic was that over
600,000 college students are assaulted each year by another
drinking college student. I live in the city of Boston. The
population there is about 600,000. That is equivalent to the
city of Boston in a given year being assaulted by a drinking
college student. And as you mentioned, 70,000 were the victim
of a sexual assault or date rape by another drinking college
student.
These numbers are, frankly, higher than I anticipated that
they would be when we began our research and lead me to two
immediate conclusions.
First, I think we need to improve our data systems in
monitoring this. I believe that we need to test, and this is a
legislative recommendation, I think we need to test every
unnatural death in the United States for alcohol. We do a
pretty good job of testing fatally injured drivers in traffic
crashes and that has permitted us to assess whether or not
legal interventions and programs to reduce drinking and driving
have had an impact on reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths.
We need to do this for all unnatural deaths, for homicides,
suicides, falls, drownings, burns, and so on so that we can get
a yardstick against which to measure whether or not our
programs make any difference.
Second, as you mentioned, we need to enforce our age 21
law. That is the legal drinking age in every State in the
Nation. We know that when that law is enforced, that it reduces
alcohol-related injuries and fatalities.
Because most of the alcohol-related deaths among college
students are traffic deaths, we do have a series of
recommendations based on research that can reduce alcohol-
related traffic deaths. Administrative license revocation laws,
we have those in 40 States. Lowering the legal limit to 0.08,
the Senate has already passed legislation that will fine States
if they do not do that. Thirty-two States have that law.
Mandatory screening and treatment for people who are convicted
of driving while intoxicated, the law in 23 States. Primary
enforcement of safety belt laws, we have that only in 18
States. That law, if every State adopted it, probably prevent
600 alcohol-related traffic deaths a year and another 1,000
non-alcohol-related traffic deaths. And then, finally, the use
of sobriety checkpoints is a proven method to reduce these
problems.
Finally, we need to have colleges and their surrounding
communities form partnerships and work together to address this
problem. The colleges cannot do it alone. If they crack down
and the communities, surrounding communities are not on board,
it will just drive the problem out in the community.
Conversely, if the communities crack down and the colleges are
lax, it will just drive the problem back onto campus. We need
the two of them to work together and to involve students.
I think that unless students are involved in this process,
many of them will think that greater restrictions are
authoritarian and paternalistic. What most people do not know
is that a majority of college students want stricter
enforcement and stricter regulation around alcohol issues.
After all, many of them are being affected by other student's
drinking and behavior after drinking.
So I think that we do have a number of tools available to
us to reduce this problem and if we implement those laws and
those regulations and enforce them, we will not only reduce the
harm that college drinking students cause themselves, but the
harm that they cause other college students and members of the
community, as well.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Doctor, for very helpful
testimony, also. Dr. Goldman, good morning.
TESTIMONY OF MARK S. GOLDMAN, Ph.D.,\1\ DIRECTOR, ALCOHOL AND
SUBSTANCE ABUSE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
Dr. Goldman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
inviting me here today. My name is Mark Goldman and I am
Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at the
University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. I was co-chair
of the Task Force on College Drinking.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Goldman with an attachment
appears in the Appendix on page 49.
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Clearly, we have reached a stage at which serious national
conversation has begun, and I applaud this Committee for taking
the lead in this effort with today's hearing. Because Dr.
Kington has summarized the task force's goals and Dr. Hingson
has reviewed the consequences of college drinking, I will first
make a few overarching points that link our task force report
to the needs of American society. Then I will briefly summarize
the task force's conclusions and recommendations.
In my role as task force co-chair, I had the opportunity to
meet some of the parents tragically affected by the events
reported by Dr. Hingson, and because I have children of my own
in this age range, I resonate to their stories. But these
individual stories and statistics, alarming as they are,
combine into an even bigger story. Simply put, this is an
enormous public health problem in America today, a problem that
has remained stubbornly consistent for decades.
Alcohol is tightly interwoven into the social fabric of
college life, bringing with it enormous social, economic, and
personal consequences for our children, consequences, we are
learning, that are probably more extensive than any of us
imagined. I cannot emphasize enough that it is a culture, our
culture, which we face. At best, this culture seizes some of
our best and brightest, robbing them of their academic
potential, and it affects virtually all members of the college
community, including non-drinking students who are often
victimized. At worst, this culture takes lives right then and
there. These circumstances cannot be dismissed, therefore, as
simply a rite of passage or an inevitable part of college life.
For policy makers and legislators, however, there is an
equally important, although much less obvious, point to
remember. Despite the certainty with which many researchers
present their findings, much work remains to be done.
Certainly, there is an abundance of small scale, university-
specific studies and there is ample anecdotal evidence and case
studies which document the kind of apparently isolated events
commonly used by the media to bring this issue to the public
attention.
But in almost all areas of college drinking, from how
widespread the problem is to the factors that place individuals
at most risk for the problems, to what types of interventions
work best, there is a paucity of research that adheres to the
level of methodological rigor that is essential if research is
to be truly informative for decision makers. Encouraging
college presidents, policy makers, and researchers themselves
to demand this standard of scientific rigor is one of the
critical aspects of our task force report.
Rigorous scientific research has the potential to break the
terrible cycle we see repeated time and again, a tragic death
followed by a large amount of money thrown at the problem with
little or no evaluation. Few of these efforts achieve any
lasting results. Administrators become frustrated, policy
makers cynical, students apathetic, and college drinking
continues as an apparently intractable problem.
Now, as to specific recommendations, two are offered for
presidents and their staffs. First, the task force recommends
an overarching framework for organizing alcohol prevention and
intervention programs. The purpose of this organization, which
is called the three-in-one framework, is to create a
comprehensive program that focuses simultaneously on multiple
levels--individuals, the student population as a whole, and the
surrounding community--and each of these approaches must be
used in concert. Problems are likely to arise in any domain not
included in the plan. To achieve this concerted approach,
representatives from each of these components must be part of
the planning process, including the alcohol and hospitality
industries.
Second, the task force recommends specific strategies
tailored to the unique needs and characteristics of each school
that may be used within each of these levels. No two schools
are alike. The recommended strategies are divided into four
tiers, effective with college audiences, effective with general
populations but not yet tested, promising, and ineffective.
Planners must choose from the first three alternatives and then
evaluate outcomes. We would never allow a medication to be
commercially used without testing, but that practice is
regularly followed in connection with college drinking
programs.
For the research community and NIAAA in particular, the
task force identified a variety of knowledge gaps that offer
new research opportunities and it called for communication of
results as broadly as possible. And, it emphasized the bridging
of the gap that all too often exists between researchers and
policy makers.
I believe these steps, taken together, will move our field
and our Nation forward in coming to grips with a pervasive
public health problem.
The path we need to follow is relatively clear, but it is
not easy or inexpensive. We need the public will and leadership
of legislators to provide the resources needed to continue this
important work, and we need to acknowledge the disparity
between the size of the problem and the resources currently
devoted to the organizations designed to address it. As an NIH
institute, NIAAA is perfectly situated to lead the effort to
cope with this huge societal problem. Thank you again.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Goldman.
Thanks to all of you. Dr. Goldman made a statement about
the problem existing for a long time, and I think all of us
know that from our own experience. Is there any data to suggest
that the problem of so-called binge drinking has become more
serious in recent years on college and university campuses? Dr.
Hingson.
Dr. Hingson. There is some survey data, the College Alcohol
Survey that Dr. Henry Wechsler conducts at the Harvard School
of Public Health. It is a national survey that he has been
conducting periodically since 1993. The evidence is that there
has been a slight increase in this, what you call binge
drinking, five or more drinks on an occasion in the past couple
of weeks for a man or four or more for a woman. This has
increased.
What is interesting is that during the same time period
among people under the age of 21, among high school students,
for example, there have been declines in consumption and there
have been declines in this type of drinking among persons the
same age not in non-college. So it is particularly an issue on
the college campuses.
But I think it is important to point out that a lot of the
problems arise--the drinking problems begin even before young
people start to college. There is a whole line of research that
indicates that the younger people are when they begin to drink,
the more likely they are to develop alcohol dependence, the
more likely they are to drink frequently to intoxication, to
experience unintentional injuries, motor vehicle crashes
because of drinking, get in physical fights because of
drinking, have unprotected sex after drinking. This is a
problem that is bubbling up into the college campuses and that
is why it is so important that we need to work with the
communities in which the college students reside.
Also, even though a smaller percentage of 18- to 24-year-
olds who are not in college are not driving after drinking as
those in college or engaging in binge drinking as frequently,
there are so many more 18- to 24-year-olds not in college than
in college that overall a larger number engage in those
behaviors that they account for even more fatalities and
injuries than we talked about in the report on college student
drinking. So this is a problem that the entire society needs to
address.
Unintentional injuries in the United States are the leading
cause of death for people ages one to 34. Thirty-eight percent
of those injuries are alcohol-related. So what are we talking
about here? We are talking about the leading contributor to the
leading cause of death of young people in the United States.
That is something that not only college campuses, but our
entire society needs to try to address.
Chairman Lieberman. Well said. Any other thoughts about the
relative seriousness of the problem? Dr. Goldman.
Dr. Goldman. Yes. I would like to say that we have to keep
in mind, again, that this is a culture, and part of the culture
is that we have not paid attention to this. It has seemed
something acceptable. It seemed something ordinary. In many
ways, our whole society has been working for many years to
avoid looking at it and I think this problem may have been with
us, perhaps not in the same degree that it is now, but it may
have been with us for a long time and we look away, we cover it
up, we avoid tackling this problem because it seems so everyday
and something that is accepted.
I think the point that needs to be made--and this hearing
is a perfect starting point--is that the attention has to be
placed on this behavior in a way that suggests that it is not
something that should remain as part of our culture but rather
something that we need to change.
Even an institute like NIAAA, people think of as dealing
with serious alcoholism. Well, in fact, the problem is much
larger. The public health problem, the problem of alcohol
pervades many aspects of our society, from children even
through adolescence through college, and in ways that are not
the characteristic alcoholic that people think of. We need to
tackle this problem in this broad way and stop thinking of it
as something ordinary.
Chairman Lieberman. I want to come back in a little bit to
the comments you made about alcoholism, but you have used the
word ``culture'' several times. What do you mean by that? Do
you mean our culture in the normal sense in which culture is
used is sending messages to young people about the
acceptability of drinking or do you mean that there is sort of
a sociological ethic within the college campus community that
creates its own incentives or lack of deterrents to indulge in
such behavior?
Dr. Goldman. Well, let me put it this way. I have heard
from a number of college presidents that when their schools,
much to their chagrin, made it onto a national listing of top
party schools, they thought that their enrollment would go
down, and in fact, quite the contrary happened. Their
enrollment went up. The applications went up.
What happens is already in high school and before, kids are
taught that one of the things that is going to happen when you
get to college is you are going to get a chance to party and
you are going to get a chance to have a really good time
involving alcohol. They see their choice of college as actually
being based, in part, on the opportunity to do that kind of
thing. Then when they get to college, there are various factors
within the college environment, of course, that sustain and
perpetuate that kind of idea, and quite frankly, I think it
even carries on into adulthood when people report to their kids
what they remember about their own college lives and the fun
that they had involving alcohol.
So it just seems like this is the thing to do. This is what
you do. You go to college, you study, and you party and drink,
and all that goes together.
Chairman Lieberman. That is interesting and, in some ways,
surprising testimony. Part of what I had suspected and heard
from a few people was that some college and university
administrators do not focus on this problem because they do not
want to highlight it for fear that it would actually reduce
enrollments. It is a perverse notion that it might actually
increase enrollments.
Dr. Kington, did you want to add anything?
Dr. Kington. Just that when trying to develop interventions
to address this problem, it is extraordinarily important to
recognize that there is a wide variation in cultures across
college campuses. We have over 3,600 colleges and universities.
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, individual campuses
have their own cultures.
Dr. Kington. Absolutely, and interventions have to be
targeted to the specific circumstances on individual college
campuses. That is why we have to have an array of tools that we
can offer college presidents and communities to address their
specific problems.
Chairman Lieberman. I want to come back to this question of
alcoholism because I have been focusing in my own mind on the
problem of binge drinking, which I understand to be something
different from alcoholism in the sense of a dependency on
alcohol. Binge drinking, as I understand, is an act of
momentary or temporary irresponsibility. I suppose it can lead
to a dependency, but am I right? Is that what we are talking
about here--something different from alcoholism as we have come
to know it?
Dr. Kington. Yes. Alcohol dependency, the disease, is
different from what is often described as binge drinking. I
think the point that was being made is that you have to look at
this problem of binge drinking within a broader context of the
societal problem of alcohol. But you are right, they are
different things.
Dr. Goldman. Although, if I may point out, that using the
technical criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
the American Psychiatric Association, a number of college
students could have the diagnosis of alcohol dependence applied
to them during their college years, based on their pattern of
drinking.
Dr. Kington. But binging, per se, does not equal
alcoholism.
Chairman Lieberman. It does not equal alcoholism. On the
other hand, and correct me again, the number that jumps out of
those statistics--which is the 1,400 deaths a year, and the
other numbers, too, half-a-million injuries and 70,000 sexual
assaults--presumably, those are not all the result of binge
drinking. How do we divide the problem or is the data capable
of doing that?
Dr. Hingson. I think you have raised a very good point. I
mean, what are we talking about with binge drinking? Five
drinks in an hour, or five drinks for a male. If I had five
drinks in an hour on an empty stomach, I would reach a blood
alcohol level of about 0.10. That would be legal intoxication
in every State in the Nation. So they are drinking to the point
of impairment, and then, unfortunately, lack of judgment sets
in and people engage in behaviors that pose risk not only to
themselves, but to others.
So we are talking about a pattern of drinking that not only
is dangerous in and of itself, but contributes to other
behaviors that pose risk for the drinkers and for people other
than the drinkers, the people who may be assaulted, or 40
percent of alcohol-related traffic deaths are people other than
the drinking drivers. So there are a lot of innocent victims
here and what I think we need to do is to mobilize the
communities who are being adversely affected by these behaviors
who may not necessarily be the heavy drinkers themselves but
who are being impacted by the behavior, irresponsible behavior
of these people after drinking to that level.
Dr. Kington. It is also important to note that this is not
just a problem of binge drinking.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a good point.
Dr. Kington. Those who drink less than that cutoff are
often still impaired and can be the source of major problems,
as well. You cannot just pin this on the binge drinkers.
Dr. Hingson. About 20 percent of alcohol-related traffic
deaths involve people with blood alcohol levels below 0.10,
which five drinks would get you to that level.
Chairman Lieberman. So binge drinking is a unique problem,
but the overall problem we are discussing is part of a larger
societal problem of substance abuse, in this case, of
alcoholism.
I want to make sure I understand something that you said
earlier, Dr. Hingson, and was I hearing you correctly, which is
that the problem of alcohol-related deaths and injuries is
greater statistically among college students in that age
bracket than non-college students?
Dr. Hingson. When we looked at the National Household
Survey on Drug Abuse, 42 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old
college students reported engaging in this binge drinking
behavior compared to 38 percent of the non-college. Twenty-
seven percent of the 18- to 24-year-old college students said
they drove under the influence of alcohol in the past year,
compared to 20 percent of non-college. So the college students
are more apt to engage in this heavy drinking and risky
behavior after----
Chairman Lieberman. The percentage differences are not
enormous, but they are real. How would you explain them? My
reaction would be that students at college are away from home,
so that they may take liberties that they would----
Dr. Hingson. They do not have jobs to go to.
Chairman Lieberman. They do not have jobs to go to the next
morning, right.
Dr. Hingson. They do not have the same responsibilities,
and I think that, unfortunately, many college campuses have
been permissive and have been lax in enforcing the legal
drinking age, for example, of 21. Many college administrators
feel that is a burden. What they do not recognize is that law
saves lives.
CDC recently reviewed 49 scientific studies on this. They
found that when the drinking ages were lowered back in the
1970's, there was a 10 percent increase in alcohol-related
crashes. When the drinking ages were then increased, there was
a 16 percent decline in alcohol-related crashes. The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every
year, 700 to 1,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths are prevented
as a result of having a legal drinking age of 21.
I think actually that is a conservative estimate because it
does not take into account other problems that are associated
with underage drinking, the falls, the drownings, the burns,
the homicides, the suicides, the unprotected sex, illicit drug
use, poor academic performance, and so on.
And in addition, we have a recent body of research that is
emerging that indicates that the younger people are when they
start to drink, the more likely they are to have dependence, to
have unintentional injuries under the influence, motor vehicle
crashes after drinking, get in physical fights after drinking,
not only when they are adolescents, but it carries over into
adult life.
So for all of these reasons, efforts to delay or prevent
underage drinking or delay the age of onset of drinking will
have life-saving benefits to our society.
Chairman Lieberman. We will ask this question on the next
panel, but one of the things that the University of Connecticut
has done in response, and they lost two students this school
year to an alcohol-related incident, is to increase the on-
campus penalties for involvement with alcohol, and we may hear
more about that as we go on.
Beyond law enforcement, either on campus or in society
generally, I want to ask you now to speak in a little more
detail about what we know about what kinds of programs work--
education, intervention, etc. Presumably, this is a classic
case where you would want a light to go on in a student's head
before they got into binge drinking, or in the head of a friend
who would stop them before they went to excess. So what do the
studies show?
Dr. Hingson. I think that there are a number of
experimental studies, and I will encourage Dr. Goldman to
comment on this because he has done some of them, that indicate
that individual counseling approaches with high-risk college
students can reduce their drinking and subsequent problems.
An illustration. Particularly in emergency department,
trauma center settings, when people have been brought in and
alcohol contributed to the problem that led them there to begin
with, there was a study done by Dr. Larry Gontilillo at the
Harbor View Trauma Center, where they tested for alcohol all of
the people who came to that trauma center. So these are people
who had to be put on life support to stay alive. They found
that 46 percent had been injured under the influence of
alcohol.
They then did a randomized trial, an experimental study,
where they allocated half of them to receive a 30-minute brief
intervention where they were told how their drinking compared
to people of the same age and gender nationwide, what their
increased risk of injury and medical problem was if they
continued to drink at that level, and then they were told where
they could get help.
They followed them up a year later. Those in the
intervention group were averaging three drinks less per day.
Over a 3-year period, compared to the control group there was a
23 percent reduction in driving under the influence arrests, a
47 percent reduction in emergency department injury admissions,
and a 48 percent reduction in trauma center injury admissions.
Those are remarkable reductions.
Chairman Lieberman. That is very impressive.
Dr. Hingson. What happened? They caught these people at a
teachable moment. They had just been injured so severely under
the influence that they needed to be put on life support to
stay alive.
A similar study has been done by Peter Monte at Rhode
Island Hospital in a pediatric emergency department where the
average age was 18 and he found similar results. There are at
least eight or nine experimental studies with college students
that show if you can identify high-risk college students and
offer these types of brief interventions to them, it will
reduce their drinking and subsequent problem.
The issue is, unfortunately, that many college students do
not think they have drinking problems and they are not getting
recruited into and indentified in screening programs. Less than
1 percent are receiving any kind of counseling in a given year.
So certainly, one of the interventions that we need are the
individually oriented counseling approaches, but we need to
combine that with these environmental approaches that will
change the whole culture, as Dr. Goldman talked about, that
will make it less likely that young people will have access to
alcohol and be in situations where people drink to excess.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Goldman.
Dr. Goldman. Yes. I was just going to say, it gives me the
opportunity to underscore an important thing about this report.
There might be a tendency to view this report as sort of the
final word on this issue. In other words, we have looked at the
literature and we are now telling people how it needs to be
done.
Unfortunately, in the process of looking at the literature,
we found out how little of what we have in terms of
intervention and prevention strategies is fully documented with
college students. So what we need to be doing here is setting
off the beginning of a process, and a hearing of this kind is
exactly what we need. We need to have these discussions take
place.
We need to have colleges and universities sample from this
menu in a thoughtful way in relation to their own context and
then actually test and evaluate what is going on, because the
kinds of things that we think are most appropriate and will be
most comprehensive, mainly these large-scale environmental-type
interventions where everybody is on the same page and everybody
has coordinated has not been done.
Chairman Lieberman. Tell us about that. In other words, Dr.
Hingson's example with the impressive results was with a
smaller group that already showed it had a problem, but it was
a very effective response. What does the data say about--the
report shows that this problem is more severe among freshmen.
What does the data show, if anything, about the effectiveness
of some kind of educational program for every incoming freshman
on campus?
Dr. Goldman. The first thing to say is that pure education
seems not to do the trick, so the hopefulness of using those
kinds of approaches exclusively is not very high. We just do
not see great promise in pure education, independent of these
other kinds of things.
An important thing to say is that some of the work that
needs to be done probably needs to be done before they get to
college, because we have data to show that some of the worst
drinking and most serious problems happen within weeks, in the
first few weeks after arrival.
One of the things that is sort of hard to understand
without looking closely at it is that drinking is driven by
context, so that among college students, they drink when they
have the opportunity. They drink on Thursday night, Friday
night, Saturday night, when there are not going to be classes
the next day. They drink early in the semester when there are
not going to be exams the next day.
Those kinds of moments are the times when the most work
needs to be done. We are not doing those kinds of things right
now, and just telling students that problems are likely to
arise is not going to have an effect. So the whole thrust of
this is to set this conversation in motion, to get presidents
of colleges and universities meeting with their staff and with
the local communities and with the commercial outlets that are
selling the alcohol and with the police and get everybody on
the same page and organize a system in which--somebody early in
this process used for me the concept of squeezing a balloon, so
that we do not have the air popping out in another place from
where we are squeezing. We have to do it all at the same time.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Kington, does the NIAAA coordinate
in this concern with other relevant Federal agencies? I am
thinking here of the Department of Education, for instance,
which might be a natural point of contact with the
universities, colleges, or the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, for instance?
Dr. Kington. Absolutely. We have coordinated with the
Department of Education, with the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, with the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, and with the Justice Department. We have
had collaborations with a large number of different agencies
and we think that is essential to actually address the problem.
Obviously, as an agency within the National Institutes of
Health, our focus is on the research agenda. Just to echo what
Dr. Goldman had mentioned, one of the areas where we really
need better research is looking at environmental changes,
simple things such as reinstating Friday classes. On many
college campuses, drinking begins a day earlier because Friday
classes have been eliminated. Yet, we have not had rigorous
scientific evaluations to assess those types of changes.
Another simple change is switching from students as
residential advisors to adults as residential advisors, just
shifting the type of people who are living in the dorms with
students.
So those are the areas that we are focusing on. We are
particularly interested in improving the scientific base for
changing the environment, and we work closely with all of the
relevant agencies in the Federal Government. We think that is
essential.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask each of you just a couple
more questions. Again, I said at the outset that I do not know
that this series of hearings will lead to specific legislative
proposals, but there was one made earlier. I wonder if you have
any other suggestions for legislation that would respond to
this problem.
Dr. Kington. Our focus, obviously, is on the research base,
and to the extent that we can have the resources to expand the
amount of research that we can do on these areas where there is
anecdotal evidence but not solid scientific evidence, we will
be in a better position to make sure that the interventions
that are done are effective, because one of the great
frustrations now is that college presidents do not have all the
information they need. We pull together the best evidence that
we have so that they can make the best decisions given the
evidence. But if we can expand the evidence base, we will be in
a better position of telling them not only what the choices
are, but what the effect would be. So that is the thing that we
think would be most effective for improving the science base.
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, resources for research.
I invite you to think about it and let the Committee know or
let me know what the dimensions of that would be, what kind of
needs you have.
Also, I think you said earlier in your opening statement
that you disseminate your work widely and directly to college
and university administrators.
Dr. Kington. This is the packet of material that was pulled
together and we are sending it to every college and university
in the country and we actually have been delighted with the
response. We have had calls asking for hundreds of the packets
of information----
Chairman Lieberman. Good.
Dr. Kington [continuing]. And we are gearing up to
distribute it even more widely. The website has also been a
great media for distributing information.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Hingson, any other ideas for
legislation?
Dr. Hingson. Yes, a couple of things to say. First, there
has been research that indicates that comprehensive community
programs can reduce alcohol problems. These are programs where
we organize across different departments of city government,
the health department, the schools department, the police
department, parks and recreation, engineering, and have people
in city government work with concerned private citizens, the
Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
people who care about these issues.
A number of these studies have shown that among college-
age--they have not specifically identified college students,
but among college-age, they can reduce the access of young
people to alcohol, they can reduce their alcohol consumption,
they can reduce hospital emergency department assault injury
admissions, motor vehicle crashes, alcohol-related crash
deaths. So just as we need to work cooperatively at the Federal
Government across agencies, we need to do the same thing at the
community level.
One particular piece of legislation that I think would be
important to look at, in over 30 States in the United States,
there are laws that permit insurance companies to withhold
reimbursement for people who have been injured under the
influence of alcohol. If we think about that, that is a
terrible disincentive for medical care providers in emergency
department settings and trauma centers to test for the problems
that are leading patients to wash up on their shores to begin
with.
Connecticut, by the way, has a model law that I think the
rest of the country ought to consider with regards to reporting
and testing for alcohol problems and requiring that that be
entered into medical records. So I think you could look to your
own State for legislation that I think would be a great
benefit. In only about a third, 20 percent of trauma centers is
there routine testing for alcohol going on. Only about a third
of primary care physicians systematically query their patients
about their drinking. So we need to move across entire
communities, including the medical community, to have
legislation that would favor taking a look at this problem
rather than sort of hiding it under the rug.
Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting. Dr. Goldman.
Dr. Goldman. I do not have a specific recommendation for
legislation, but I would like to underscore one point that I
think would be important to come down from Washington and
become a more generally agreed upon standard, and it
underscores what I said earlier, which is we would never
introduce a new medication to market without extensive testing.
But routinely, problems come along, we see problems, such as
with college students, someone comes along and markets a
package. College presidents and administrators are sort of up
against the wall to do something about it. They listen to a
story and they buy into it. Then what happens is nothing much
changes and everybody gets frustrated.
What we need to do is underscore not just the idea of
research in the sense of breaking new ground, but what we need
is research in the sense of evaluations. Every school that does
its own program needs to evaluate the consequences of that
program to see what works, to see the parts that might work and
the parts that do not work, to keep upgrading and moving it in
a progressive direction.
It cannot just be because somebody has made a decision that
we will buy into this program and now that program is on campus
and we are those who now take care of the problem because we
have this program. That cannot be accepted as the standard any
longer. We have to move toward an evaluation standard.
Dr. Hingson. Sir, if I could make one final point----
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead.
Dr. Hingson. I think that there is a bill in Congress to
roll back the tax on beer. The preponderance of scientific
evidence indicates that price, if you increase the price of
alcohol, that reduces consumption. Young people have less
discretionary income, so they are particularly likely to be
affected by this. Not every study shows this specifically among
college students, but if we think about the issue of the
younger people are when they start to drink and start to drink
heavily, that lead to alcohol problems not only in college but
throughout adult life, I think we have every reason not to cut
back on the amount of tax that we have on alcohol.
Chairman Lieberman. I want to thank the three of you very
much for the work that you are doing, also for your testimony.
We would like to keep in touch with you as this Committee's
inquiry goes on. Thanks very much.
I will now call on the second panel: Drew Hunter is the
Executive Director of BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer Education Network;
Chief Robert Nolan, Chief of Police of the Hamden, Connecticut,
Police Department; Dr. Daniel Reardon, a parent; and Dr. John
Welty, the President of California State University at Fresno.
Thanks to all of you for being here. Dr. Reardon, thank you
for coming forward after the tragedy you have been through. I
appreciate very much your willingness to testify. I know it
will be helpful to the Committee and I am sure it will be
helpful to others who will hear about it, so we would welcome
your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF DANIEL P. REARDON, D.D.S.,\1\ PARENT
Dr. Reardon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for inviting me to this hearing. All I can say is that I
would truly prefer not to be here to discuss the issues of
binge drinking on college campuses and I prefer that my son
Daniel be alive and that he be finishing up his examinations at
the University of Maryland and that he and I would be
discussing plans for the summer, for next year, and for his
future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Reardon appears in the Appendix
on page 56.
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For him, there really are no future plans. He died on
Valentine's Day this year and he died in an environment to
where it was a fraternity hazing and he was basically killed by
his friends in an initiation for fraternity. That is a specific
subculture of this issue, but it certainly happened in the
greater culture of binge drinking and the use of alcohol
amongst our youth in our society. So that is really the issue
that I want to talk to, is the issue of the pervasive culture
of alcohol.
As a parent, and both myself and Danny's mom were very much
aware, certainly starting in grammar school and through the
middle years in high school, of the extent of alcohol and drugs
with our youth, but what I have to say is that the real concern
of Danny's mom and I was the use of illegal drugs. I have got
to say that alcohol really did not come up on the radar screen,
up until my son's death.
What is extraordinary about this is that, literally, in the
weeks following my son's death, is that five parents in this
similar group of friends and two patients in my dental practice
came up to me to share with me the brushes that their sons had
with acute alcoholic poisoning and almost the potential death
of their sons. This absolutely stunned me and I realized that I
was not alone in this and that people were not aware and
talking about this problem.
Of course, other groups and this distinguished panel of
experts here, I am now becoming--I am not an expert in this, I
am just a dad whose son has died as a result of this, but
people are sharing these horrific statistics to which I,
sending my son off to school, was just totally ignorant of, and
he was certainly not aware of it, either, and I know he did not
go off to college to die.
So the experts are sharing the statistics of the rampant
use of alcohol in colleges and I think this is extraordinarily
important and I think it is important that light is being shed
on this problem and that universities must move out of their
denial. I am glad to hear that there are universities that are
moving out of this denial.
I went to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts,
and I just found out this weekend, that a student was assaulted
and killed walking up a set of stairs on the campus. I mean,
this is just awful. I know the tragedy that those parents are
going to experience, going to retrieve the body of their dead
son.
And what is extraordinary about this is that this is
happening to the best of our youth. This is not a subculture.
This is the best of the best with parents who have the
resources to educate and give the very finest to their children
and they are dying in these statistics of 1,400 a year.
I think what astounded me was to find out that 40 percent,
or whatever the statistic, it is just horrific, are getting
blind drunk once a week. I could not believe this. And the
number of children in high schools that get drunk once a month,
I think it is 25 percent. I was absolutely unaware of this.
And so this is a social problem that is not happening just
to the disenfranchised. It is happening to the best of our
youth, from families that desire the best for their children
and have the resources to provide it. Something is really wrong
here.
I am not an expert in these issues. I am only an expert on
the anguish of sleeping on the floor of an ICU unit for 6 days
while my son died, lay dying, which was every parent's
nightmare and was totally preventable.
So I have had a chance over the last several months to
think about this and I think that universities--just as
businesses have employee assistance programs--is that we need
some type of student assistance program to help kids who are in
trouble. But there has to be education and the kids have to
know that they can call someone when someone is in trouble.
I think that universities and fraternities need to control
the environments they create. I think that the role of
fraternities and sororities need to be seriously evaluated as
to how they foster any educational role on university campuses
and why, after so many years of knowing about this problem,
they have done so little to prevent the tragedies.
I am glad that the Federal Government is looking into this
and becoming aware of the problem. It is a massive problem.
Finally, I think the Federal Government is going to have to
look at the role that they have in allowing the type of
advertisements that the liquor industry has on TV. I have
become very sensitized to this in the last 3 months, of what
these advertisements are like.
The thing is that my son was a level-headed kid. He wanted
to go into the Foreign Service. He wanted to study economics.
He wanted to be part of the Federal Government, and he is never
going to have that experience.
And so all I can say as a parent is that I am very glad
that at a national level this is coming into the consciousness
of the government and the people, and thank you very much for
having me here.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Reardon. Thanks very much.
Dr. Welty.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN D. WELTY, Ed.D.,\1\ PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA
STATE UNIVERSITY, FRESNO
Mr. Welty. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity and
inviting me to participate in today's hearing. Tragedy often
results in a call to action and it was the death of a student
in the fall of 2000 at Chico State in California that caused
Chancellor Charles Reed to appoint a 21-member committee
consisting of presidents, vice presidents, faculty, students,
and alumni of the California State University to look at our
alcohol policies and prevention programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Welty with attachments appears in
the Appendix on page 58.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The problem of student drinking is a complex one, as we
have heard, but the question that was posed to the Committee
which I chaired was simple and straightforward--how can we
prevent any more tragedies? We set for ourselves goals that
were perhaps bold and ambitious, but we knew from the outset
that our impact was far-reaching because our system has
388,000-plus students, 42,000 faculty located in 23 communities
in California.
We began our work in December 2000. We began by meeting
with State and national experts who provided us with research
and insights into the best practices across the country. From
these discussions, it became clear that presidential leadership
would play a critical role if we were to address this issue. It
was made clear that California State University presidents must
make this a priority on their campuses in a very demonstrable
way. The ``Be Vocal, Be Visible, and Be Visionary'' statement
from the national Presidents' Leadership Group established by
the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug
Prevention is an example of what our committee envisioned.
We also stressed the importance of developing a
comprehensive alcohol policy at each of our campuses which
would be aligned with this new systemwide initiative, and we
also emphasized that once policies were developed, they must be
consistently enforced. Student involvement in policy planning
and program implementation was also identified as a very
important part of our deliberation, and, in fact, students were
major participants in the work which we undertook and made a
major contribution to our end product.
We also learned that it was important to have on our campus
well-trained staff and that treatment programs needed to be
available for those students who need them. And then we also
learned that it was important that we gather data in a very
systematic way to assess the nature and extent of the problem
on our campuses.
As a result of this work, we focused on six key areas:
Comprehensive policies; consistent enforcement; education and
prevention; training, intervention, and treatment; assessment;
and then, finally, the development of adequate resources to
sustain a long-term and comprehensive effort on our 23
campuses.
We also as a committee recommended that our campuses look
at using the social norms approach as a prevention model, not
exclusively, but as one key component. Peer education programs,
about which you will hear shortly, were also stressed, along
with the establishment of a broad range of campus and community
partnerships that involve all stakeholders in the planning and
implementation process.
In July 2001, our Board of Trustees adopted the recommended
policy, and in addition, the Chancellor and trustees committed
$1.1 million for this current academic year to begin to
implement the policies.
Immediately following this effort, each of the campuses
were expected to create a Campus Advisory Council that
consisted of key stakeholders on the campus, and also members
of our community, law enforcement, prevention folks, and even
owners and operators of local liquor establishments. The policy
also stressed the importance of these partnerships and placed
an emphasis upon enforcing existing laws, decreasing the use of
alcohol in the promotion of business and community events,
reducing underage sales, and drastically curtailing promotions
that encourage excessive drinking, such as happy hours and two
drinks that can be bought for the price of one. We also focused
on expanding alcohol-free recreational events for young people,
both on and off campus.
I mentioned earlier that one of the recommendations adopted
by the board was that of a social norms approach. We undertook
for all of our staff a conference sponsored in conjunction with
BACCHUS and GAMMA this year that provided training in this
area.
But it is important, I think, to recognize that we took one
additional step, and that was we partnered with six State of
California agencies ranging from Alcohol Beverage Control to
Highway Patrol, Office of Traffic Safety. That partnership has
now yielded $2 million in support for programs on our campuses
that will be very important as we implement this effort.
Finally, I would like to comment on three suggestions that
I might have regarding how the Federal Government might be able
to assist in the efforts that we have undertaken.
First, it is clear that we have much to learn regarding
this complex and challenging problem and Federal support for
high-quality and comprehensive research is desperately needed.
Second, we desperately need to encourage individuals to
enter careers in alcohol and other drug prevention and
treatment.
And finally, I urge you to evaluate existing programs that
are currently funded and to change criteria in such a way that
would allow institutions of higher education and governmental
agencies to work together in partnerships to address this
problem. Currently, there is a prevention from the ability to
work together because of various regulations and restrictions.
As a system, our California State University is committed
to continue to address this problem. We know we have just
begun, but our goal is to ensure that the last call will no
longer be the final call for any of our students. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Welty. That is a very
impressive report. While my mind is focused on it, give me an
example, if you can, of some existing Federal law or regulation
that is preventing the kind of cooperation that you wisely
would like to see.
Mr. Welty. I certainly would be happy to follow up in a
little more detail, but I think we found that in many grant
programs, there are restrictions that either do not allow
cooperation between a research program and campuses or other
types of restrictions that narrow the focus of a program, which
then does not allow for a comprehensive view of this issue on
the campuses. I will certainly be happy to follow up with some
specific examples.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. That would be great. We are
going to leave the record of the hearing open for 2 weeks after
today for submissions of that kind, or if any of the other
Members of the Committee wish to ask some questions.
I am really personally proud to welcome Chief Robert Nolan
here. I have known the Chief for a long time. He is a
distinguished member of the greater New Haven community, where
I have lived for more than four decades now, and has been on
the front lines of dealing with this problem in response to,
particularly, a series of tragic alcohol-related deaths and
injuries at one particular school of higher education in
Hamden, Quinnipiac University. Chief Nolan, thanks for being
here.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT F. NOLAN,\1\ CHIEF OF POLICE, TOWN OF
HAMDEN, CONNECTICUT
Chief Nolan. Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Chairman. The
invitation was really appreciated by me to have the opportunity
to discuss this very serious issue of binge drinking on college
campuses.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Chief Nolan appears in the Appendix
on page 77.
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Recent tragedies involving college students in my own
community have prompted my department to work even more closely
with university officials on several fronts to help curb what
is a serious national public health and safety problem. While I
have three universities within my jurisdiction, I would like to
limit my testimony this morning to providing you with an
overview of the close working relationship my department has
forged with the university known as Quinnipiac University of
Hamden, Connecticut.
Before the current academic year, a year during which three
Quinnipiac students were killed in alcohol-related accidents
and an officer was seriously injured when struck by a student
driving under the influence coming out of a house party, and a
number of injuries occurred to individuals as a result of other
alcohol-related accidents, my staff and I began meeting with
Quinnipiac's management team.
Through an open exchange of data and ideas, we have
developed what I feel is a model for university and law
enforcement relations as it pertains to alcohol abuse by
college students. And yet, despite our educational and
enforcement efforts, we were unable to avoid three families
having their lives irreversibly changed when they lost their
loved ones.
As someone previously mentioned, they have met with the
loved ones and mothers and parents of some of these students
that were killed or injured in accidents. I have had probably
the worst times in my career of 31 years having to speak with
parents. I am, however, convinced that without the proactive
steps we have taken in the areas of education and enforcement,
even more fatalities or injuries could have resulted.
I would like to share with you some of the programs
currently in place as well as some additional measures that
together we can take to address this national crisis.
The Hamden Police Department's Street Crime Unit, along
with our community police officers, present alcohol-related
programs to the students at the university on a continuous
basis throughout the academic year. The university also extends
alcohol awareness and educational programs in resident halls
that house Quinnipiac undergraduates. These educational
programs are provided continually with special emphasis during
National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week.
In my opinion, the Quinnipiac University administration
deals diligently and cooperatively with our department and
responds with disciplinary action. This extends especially to
students who violate the alcohol policy. Incidents of alcohol
abuse off-campus are also dealt with in a swift and effective
manner. This is particularly important inasmuch as these
problems seem to have escalated in our town since students have
been moved off campus. The recent relocation of senior students
to off-campus housing certainly seems to have a direct
correlation to the increase in alcohol-related accidents.
The sophistication of fake ID operatives is staggering.
Standardization of licenses or State or Federal identification
cards and the ability of issuing jurisdictions to share
information is imperative. A fake ID was found in the
possession of a Quinnipiac student who was killed in an
alcohol-related motor vehicle accident last month when his car,
traveling at excessive speed, hit a tree and became airborne
twice.
Checkpoints have been proven as an effective deterrent to
DUI. Increased funding for personnel and vehicles would allow
local enforcement officials to expand checkpoints as they are
not only a means of apprehending and enforcing, but also we
find them a good manner in which to continue to educate
students about the dangers of drinking and driving.
Other programs that we have in place at the present time
which the university has assisted us with is we use undercover
officers going into the house parties and, in turn, making
available to us the information needed to obtain search
warrants which we serve on these particular homes, either
college-owned or private homes that house students.
The Hamden Police Department, in conjunction with
Quinnipiac University, intends to implement additional programs
in the effort to combat this problem, such as expanding the
safe ride program which was developed, offering the police
department's availability as a means of transportation with no
questions asked when an individual may have to drive under the
influence to get back to their housing. We are attempting to
work with local taxicab companies to establish a reasonable
reduced fare to transport students under these conditions, as
well. These programs will be considerably more effective and
widespread with the existence of Federal grant or State grant
money.
In addition, the Town of Hamden's Department of Police
Service has reached an agreement with Quinnipiac University
whereby in the beginning of the fall semester 2002, two police
officers will be assigned specifically to the college campus, 7
days a week, through different shifts. They will be used in a
similar manner as the school resource officers are being used
in public schools at the present time. They will interact with
students and administrators in an effort to continue to educate
and eradicate alcohol-related issues.
Let me close by saying that I am not here today advocating
prohibition. We cannot kid ourselves about the widespread abuse
of alcohol by underage students. The ability to eliminate the
consumption is almost impossible. We will continue to strive to
reduce alcohol consumption, eradicate binge drinking, and
eliminate DUI cases, most important, save lives. Additional
education programs and enforcement efforts by the university
and the Town of Hamden Police Department will be effective
tools in this fight.
I urge my colleagues throughout the country to form a
campus-community coalition, work together with the colleges and
universities in their community to increase awareness of binge
drinking and promote personal responsibility among college
students, the ultimate solution to this national problem. Thank
you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Chief. That was excellent
testimony. Is there any activity, to the best of your
knowledge, for instance, in the National Association of Chiefs
of Police along the lines you have talked about?
Chief Nolan. There has been discussion. Since research has
brought it to the forefront as it has, which, unfortunately,
our particular town found out through experience, we are
finding that we are having more injuries, accidents, and deaths
from this particular problem than the illegal drug activity.
Chairman Lieberman. That correlates with what Dr. Reardon
said. The numbers at Quinnipiac are just stunning and really
unsettling. I have been using the number four and you said
three, but I think it is three deaths in this academic year and
then I think there may have been one in the year before.
Chief Nolan. In a combination of motor vehicle accidents
and alcohol poisoning, we have had over the last several years
approximately five.
Chairman Lieberman. And just to highlight something you
have said, your observation is that the problem is more intense
as the number of students living off-campus increases.
Chief Nolan. Quinnipiac, due to expansion, has moved
almost, if not all, of their senior and graduate students off
campus. We have found in going back and reviewing our records
that the accidents and problems with DWI began to increase
substantially as this took place.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Welty, while we are on this, is the
pattern that Chief Nolan has described of the campus-community
relationship, here in this case between the university and
police department, typical of what is happening in California
under the State University system plan that you have discussed?
Mr. Welty. It is a key part of our plan and it actually,
with the support we have now received from the State agencies,
they are encouraging highway patrols, and city police to work
with us much more closely. As we reviewed this problem, it is
clear to us that integration needs to occur in each community
if we are going to be effective.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. Drew Hunter, thanks for being
here. Tell us about your organization and what we can do to be
helpful.
TESTIMONY OF DREW HUNTER,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BACCHUS AND
GAMMA PEER EDUCATION NETWORK
Mr. Hunter. All right. Mr. Chairman, it is a great honor
and privilege to be here, as well. I guess I get to close for
the panel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter appears in the Appendix on
page 81.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am here today as the Executive Director of the BACCHUS
and GAMMA Peer Education Network, a 27-year-old student
leadership organization focusing on alcohol abuse prevention
and related student health and safety issues. We presently have
affiliates on more than 1,000 colleges and universities and our
organization is all about partnerships and we have been working
on this issue since the last time the NIAAA spoke out on this,
which was their 50 Plus 12 project in the early 1970's, and
that was actually the founding of much of what our organization
has begun.
Before getting to the heart of my remarks, I am pleased
that there was a panel from this College Task Force of the
NIAAA. Their recent report on college drinking is a significant
achievement because it supports many of the strategies that our
organization has been advocating for some time, including the
importance of engaging student leadership on this topic through
peer education. This report will be very helpful in the
upcoming academic year as we press our host campuses for more
attention to this important issue. Being that there were no
students on the panel today, I will try to play that role,
despite my advancing age.
From my experience, there are really four key components of
a successful campus alcohol prevention program that need most
attention. The first is a strong need of a commitment from
campus presidents and their administrations. Simply stated,
college presidents and their administrations must prioritize
their commitment and resources to work on this issue so that it
is truly a vital part of the campus mission.
I am pleased to share time on this panel with Dr. John
Welty, President of Fresno State. Having personally
participated in the CSU effort led by him and Chancellor Reed,
I am comfortable that his testimony covered this comprehensive
approach in greater detail, so I will move on.
But before I do, it is important to note that despite all
the publicity this issue has received, we know there are many
colleges and universities that still do not support a full-time
alcohol educator or staff person dedicated to these efforts. We
know there are many campuses that have higher budgets for one-
time events, like homecoming, than they do for year-round
alcohol education program. And we know that there are some
colleges and universities that have solid alcohol policies
written in their student handbook, but the policies are seldom
put into practice on campus, and that is where our troubles
begin.
As I say to you, as long as this remains true, then it is
also true that reducing alcohol-related harm is not central to
those campuses' missions, and this disparity in addressing the
issue is why we need leadership from the top down, and again, I
want to commend Dr. Welty and the CSU system.
No. 2 is a strong campus policy and the willingness to
enforce that policy. As usual, whenever you are faced with a
complicated case here in Washington, the answer is not
automatically that more policy is needed. Nor is a federalized
one-size-fits-all national policy going to work for the diverse
number and types of institutions out there. But it is the
commitment to use the policies that are already in place that
will solve many of our problems. This is what our campuses need
to do on an individual basis to better address this issue.
At the risk of creating a sound bite, campus policies and
student service programs really can be narrowed down to a
simple message that needs to get out to our students and their
families, the simple message of get smart, get help, or get
out.
What I am talking about here is the need to get smart. If a
student gets confronted for underage drinking or drinking in a
high-risk fashion, the campus needs to first give them a chance
to get smart. We must start by forcing these students to get
mandatory education on the alcohol issue.
Then get help. If a student continues to break policy a
second time, we need to respond in a caring and compassionate
way by offering that student a chance to get help. We need to
meet with these students and, where permissible and
appropriate, engage their parents in the discussions and offer
these students assessment services and counseling.
And finally, to get out, and this is sometimes a tough one.
But if students continue to drink in a high-risk fashion and
are unwilling to change their behavior, we have to have the
power to say, get out. Being dismissed from school would get
their attention and may influence their understanding that they
have bigger problems. And as importantly, it says to the rest
of the student body, this type of behavior is not acceptable
here.
No. 3, any successful program must include student peer
education. Everyone working with young people knows that we
have to impact students in their peer groups. We need to engage
students to be leaders, role models, activists, and caring
friends when it comes to stopping alcohol abuse. When students
do get involved in the issue through peer education, there are
some things that we can count on.
We know that peer educators make healthier choices
themselves and they are comfortable confronting others about
high-risk behaviors. We know that a significant percentage of
students say they would rather talk to a peer instead of a
professional counselor about troubling issues. And we know that
students learn a great deal about the culture of the
institution from watching their peers for clues of what is
acceptable and what is not.
Therefore, we must continue to advocate and support these
peer educators as a vital part of the alcohol education
process. Let us face it. They are there long after the
administrators have gone home for the day. They can make a
difference when it is needed.
And finally, No. 4, we need to market healthy norms to our
students. It is simply a fact of life that you will get much
more attention with a headline or lead story that says,
``Students Are Out of Control and Dying,'' than you will with
one that says, ``Most Students are Doing Just Fine.'' But you
know what? The real truth of the matter is that most college
students balance their bottles and books. According to the
American College Health Association data, significantly more
students leave our institutions due to health and financial
problems than drinking problems.
Social norms, as highlighted by Dr. Welty, is a prevention
tool that works by using actual student behavior to market the
healthy norms, such as broadly sharing a wide variety of
messages that the majority of the students are making healthy
choices.
Where this has been used, such as institutions like Hobart
and William Smith College in New York, they saw a 40 percent
drop in their high-risk drinking over the course of just 4
years. Northern Illinois University saw a 44 percent drop over
the course of 10 years.
Chairman Lieberman. What kinds of programs were those?
Mr. Hunter. These are social norms-based programs, which
are marketing campaigns looking at the actual student data, and
then they develop widespread marketing campaigns from the time
you enter campus to the time you graduate, marketing health,
really trying to promote an environment or a culture on the
campus that the majority of the students do not drink in ways
that cause harm to themselves or others.
Chairman Lieberman. Is it marketing health generally or is
it specifically dealing with the dangers of alcohol?
Mr. Hunter. The dangers of alcohol primarily is where we
have seen this, though you are beginning to see this approach
using a variety of other issues, including tobacco, illicit
drugs, and on diversity and acceptance issues in higher
education, as well.
Chairman Lieberman. And again, these programs cover all the
students. This is not just kids who have had some problem.
Mr. Hunter. No, these are broad. This would be literally
from the moment you enter the campus, you will see the same
type of advertising or marketing you might see on broader
topics or whatever. You will see messages, posters, websites,
all sorts of stuff promoting the broader health of the student
body, using the student data that they have taken from the
established surveying techniques, and it was also highlighted
in the NIAAA report as one of the areas to look at.
Chairman Lieberman. Just go over then, again, the results
that you cited.
Mr. Hunter. Sure, and there are a large number of campuses
that have done this, but highlighting two, Hobart and William
Smith College saw a 40 percent drop in their high-risk drinking
over the course of 4 years, and that is the binge drinking
definition that was talked about earlier. Northern Illinois
University saw a 44 percent drop over the course of 10 years
using this technique, and I will say this technique is part of
their comprehensive program----
Chairman Lieberman. So these colleges may do other things,
as well, perhaps cooperating with local law enforcement?
Mr. Hunter. Absolutely. In fact, the Northern Illinois
University, they have gone to law enforcement and looked at
their data. Not only have they reduced the reporting of these
high-risk drinking levels, but then they have also seen the
concurrent drops in a lot of the reported crimes and injuries
and things of that nature, including, I believe, sales of
alcohol in the community in some of those areas.
Chairman Lieberman. Have you finished your testimony?
Mr. Hunter. Actually, I had one more point I was going to
make, but then----
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead. I interrupted you.
Mr. Hunter. No, I appreciate your input.
Finally, I do want to address something that we have heard
a few times today and that is when we spend too much time
highlighting the problem, college students binge drink. We
mistakenly are feeding into the misperception that this is what
campus is really like, which is why many of us in the higher
education community refrain from using the popular yet
misguided term ``binge drinking'' in describing student alcohol
use.
First of all, when you think of going on a binge or being a
binge drinker, what comes to mind is someone who really needs
help, who is out of control. Yet the current definition of four
drinks if you are a woman, five drinks if you are a man, during
one sitting in a previous two-week period does not necessarily
match that perception. In addition, the definition conveniently
labels one-half the students, nearly one-half of the students
as being high-risk while ignoring the very factors that
contribute to alcohol intoxication and risk. The overuse of the
term ``binge drinking'' has really become a joke on campuses as
far as many students and really some administrators are
concerned.
It would be more productive if we would focus our efforts
to talk about those students who drink and put themselves or
others at risk by engaging in unsafe behaviors. When engaged,
college students are likely to support efforts to reduce
drinking and driving. They want to reduce incidents of sexual
assault on their campuses. They want to reduce noise in their
living areas, and they want to deter vandalism and violence on
campus.
We have had great luck in making students part of the
solution on these issues, but we have to engage them in the
process and bring them along with us. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Hunter.
Chairman Lieberman. You know, it is interesting. You quoted
at the end something I saw in your prepared testimony and I was
going to ask you about, which is the statement, ``when you
think of going on a binge, what comes to mind is someone who
really needs help, who is out of control. Yet the current
definition of four drinks for a woman and five for a man during
one sitting in the previous 2-week period does not necessarily
match the perception.'' What do you mean? I think most of us
would assume that is a lot of alcohol at one sitting.
Mr. Hunter. Sure, and please forgive me. In a 5-minute
testimony, you cannot always go into the details you would like
and we would be the last organization to not talk about this as
a very serious problem. It is what we are about. It is what we
do.
But the problem with the binge drinking definition as it is
currently put out there, and it has been useful as a benchmark
when we are looking at measuring programs, but it does not put
some of the factors that impact intoxication, or as our Chief
of Police over here would talk about, things that you can
measure from a BAC. Sure, five drinks in an hour is a lot of
alcohol and virtually any one of us on this panel would be at a
level where we would be looking at a BAC where we would not be
safe to drive a car.
But the definition does not ask about time. It does not ask
about size of the person drinking, whether they have eaten, a
lot of the factors that will involve your BAC. So what it does
is it conveniently captures as large a portion of students as
possible for purposes of raising attention to this issue. But
the same student that may drink those five drinks in an hour
and starts seeing their BAC going off the chart, the student
next to them may drink those five drinks over a 6- or 7-hour
period watching two sporting events. The definition has no way
of breaking that out and is why a lot of researchers will not
use it and why a lot of students discount it.
Chairman Lieberman. I see. So if we can focus, it is the
one sitting part of the definition that is bothering you
because you would prefer to judge it by some standard of blood
alcohol content.
Mr. Hunter. Correct, because I think that would be
something that we clearly could say that at this level of BAC,
these types of things are likely to happen. And I just think
sometimes, particularly if you are looking at the social norms
approach which has shown some effectiveness, the more we
highlight the problems going on, the more students who are
coming to the campus believe they have to drink that way to fit
in.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Hunter. And that is really part of the peer acceptance
formula that causes some problems.
Chairman Lieberman. What is your reaction to the discussion
we had with the last panel on distinguishing binge drinking,
whatever you want to call it, from the broader problem of
alcoholism in our society, or is there a distinction?
Mr. Hunter. Well, the binge drinking definition, as it is
used, I do not think is a gauge for alcoholism. The problem
with, again, the term ``binge drinking'' is that people assume
when you are talking about a binge, you are talking about an
out-of-control episodic blackout type drinking, which, again,
is not necessarily--some of the students in that binge drinking
definition may go ahead and do that that evening, but it is
not, again, the 40 percent. A significantly lower percentage of
the students would be qualifying in that.
At the college age, it is rarer to have the full alcohol
dependency diagnosed, but certainly these types of patterns,
unchecked and unchallenged in college, can lead to the
development of alcoholism over time, and some of our college
students do come to us already with full alcoholic tendencies,
needing of treatment and other services, and more of our
campuses need to provide those services and assessments and
help us find those and get them out of the system and properly
treated early on.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Reardon, I agree with everything
you said, but one of the things you said earlier, stunned me,
as well as the 40 percent of students who say that at one point
or another they were binge drinkers. What year was your son in
at the University of Maryland?
Dr. Reardon. He was in his freshman year.
Chairman Lieberman. Freshman year. To the best of your
knowledge, this was not a situation where he had what might be
called an ongoing drinking problem?
Dr. Reardon. No.
Chairman Lieberman. This was exactly the nightmare we are
discussing, which was an episodic or momentary situation where
he drank to excess?
Dr. Reardon. Well, he was in a fraternity at that time and
he was pledging.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Reardon. And the Sunday before, he told me that in this
initiation, there would be no alcohol. So to get that phone
call at 5 o'clock in the morning on Friday morning, it was, of
course, every parent's nightmare, my nightmare.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Go ahead.
Dr. Reardon. But further than that, it is a culture, it is
a subculture of what is going on in campuses, and it appears
that what happened that evening--and it is under investigation,
I do not have all the facts, but it appears that after a
certain amount of alcohol consumption is that a beer funnel was
put into his throat and then a half-a-quart of bourbon was
poured down his throat. And then when he passed out with the
fire barn or whatever, the EMT 200 yards away, no one called.
And this is something that you said, Mr. Hunter, is the
ability--and also Dr. Welty--is that kids can get help and that
there were kids in that fraternity who were afraid to call
either because Danny would get thrown out of school or they
would get thrown out of school, and so they let him pass out.
Chairman Lieberman. What has the response been of the
university so far?
Dr. Reardon. None.
Chairman Lieberman. Really?
Dr. Reardon. I have had no contact.
Chairman Lieberman. None at all?
Dr. Reardon. I received a letter from the president of the
university and he stated that every now and then, a kid's luck
runs out and Danny's luck ran out. I thought it was just a
terrible response to his death.
Chairman Lieberman. To the best of your knowledge, no
disciplinary action has been taken against the fraternity?
Dr. Reardon. The fraternity, the house has been suspended.
Chairman Lieberman. It has. And is the university doing the
investigation or are the police doing it or both?
Dr. Reardon. It is being investigated by the Prince Georges
County police, and I believe the university police are
cooperating with the official investigation by P.G. County.
Chairman Lieberman. Am I right that this just happened in
February?
Dr. Reardon. This happened in February, on February 8, yes.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask you, just to talk a little
bit more, you spoke during your opening statement about whether
there is anything you would--of course, this just came out of
the darkness of night with you, but whether there is anything
you would tell parents of kids now to look for or demand from
their universities and what you would hope colleges would do to
try to protect other kids from this kind of tragedy.
Dr. Reardon. Given the amount of time that Danny's mom and
I spent on this issue with our kids, I really do not think that
parents can really effectively intervene once the kids go off
to college. And I have got to say that what Dr. Welty is
saying, and also Mr. Hunter, as to how they are trying to
respond and help kids, I think this is absolutely critical and
I know that none of that existed on the University of Maryland
campus, and so I am very pleased to hear that this is
happening.
Chairman Lieberman. You and Dan's mom had talked to him and
your children about alcohol abuse?
Dr. Reardon. Yes. But I do have to say is that our focus
really was not on alcohol.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Dr. Reardon. We were much more concerned about the use of
marijuana in high school.
Chairman Lieberman. I bet that would be the case of most
parents in America.
Dr. Reardon. Yes. It just was not on the radar screen.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Reardon.
Dr. Reardon. You are welcome.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Welty, what about the extent to
which--I mean, you have given us a case where the California
University system had a death and just committed itself to
doing everything it could to make sure nothing like that
happened again and you are dealing with a large, very
prominent, high quality system. How would you describe the
extent of awareness and commitment to do something about this
problem we are talking about, alcoholism, binge drinking on the
campuses, among your peers throughout the country, among the
administrators of the colleges and universities in America?
Mr. Welty. I think there is variation, but I would say,
based on my experience in four other States, there is concern
about this issue. I do think that one of the things that we
need to focus more clearly on, and has been mentioned already,
and that is the need for a comprehensive approach to this
issue. It is not just having a policy, but it is a policy that
is enforced, complemented by a strong education and treatment
program, and then an ongoing review of how we are doing. I do
think there is a need, probably, for us all to be continually
reminded of the importance of this issue, but I do think it is
a concern among certainly my counterparts across the country.
Chairman Lieberman. Does the California State system have a
plan for evaluating results under the program you put into
effect?
Mr. Welty. Yes, we do. There is a requirement that each
campus reports to the board every 2 years, both evaluating what
we have done but also looking at the progress that we are
making addressing the issue on our campuses. This is our first
year, so next year will be the first of those reports.
Chairman Lieberman. Do I understand correctly that your
campus and others in the system are using the social norms
approach that Mr. Hunter described?
Mr. Welty. Yes. Most of our campuses are using that
approach, again, not as the only effort but as one of several
efforts that are being undertaken as part of the prevention and
education program.
Chairman Lieberman. Chief, did you want to add something?
Chief Nolan. I totally agree with the other gentlemen on
the panel, but there are a couple of areas that we found in
Hamden. One, I prefer not to use the word ``campus.'' In our
experience, the least amount of problems are on campus. It is
off campus that we have the problems with the students. So it
is more a university-student problem. What takes place on the
campus usually does not create the problem off the campus. The
deaths take place off the campus. The accidents and injuries
take place off the campus.
I think, I know I have and I know Dr. John Lahey has, it
finally became aware to us that there are several groups that
have to work together. There has to be the community, the
police department, the college administrators, and the parents.
I have been at meetings and conferences where people try to
bear all the responsibility to the parents or to the college or
to the police department. It is a combination of all.
I know there are certain areas that colleges have problems.
One of these accidents involved a student, and when I met with
the parents, they had no idea that this student had an ongoing
problem with alcohol binge drinking. To this day, I cannot
imagine the shock when autopsy reports came back for this poor
woman, none whatsoever.
It should be incumbent upon the universities to make
parents aware of this if there is an ongoing problem or if they
are having a problem with their child. There are certain things
that come into play on privacy and what have you. This young
man or person may still be alive if the parent had been aware
of the situation.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Chief Nolan. That is the area that I become concerned,
where we have found with several of the universities we have
met with that they want to keep everything in-house. They want
to keep it very quiet. That is not going to work. It is just
not going to happen. And to take disciplinary action or have
policies governing the students' activities off campus, I think
is as important, if not more important than on campus. I know
of universities in our area that if the incident takes place
off campus, no action is taken against the student on campus.
It is not their responsibility, not their concern. They have
major problems with that.
Chairman Lieberman. Those are very important points.
Obviously, we send a message of how seriously we take something
if we attach a penalty to it.
Mr. Hunter, what is your impression about--your program is
on a lot of campuses around the country. Maybe the ones you are
on answer the question I am going to ask, but my impression is
exactly what Chief Nolan has just said, that there are colleges
and universities that are in denial to one extent or another
about this, either because it is such a difficult problem,
human problem, or it is dismissed as just what happens,
unfortunately, tragically, to kids when they are in college, or
they do not want to publicize it because they are concerned
about the impact on the school's reputation. What is your
experience with all that?
Mr. Hunter. I think there is a certain amount of difference
campus to campus, and the reason, even though I was asked to be
here specifically on the topic of peer education, that I wanted
to reiterate the leadership needed from the college presidents
is because so many more things happen when you get the college
president involved.
I could tell you scores of campuses and dedicated student
leaders and prevention professionals that were operating in a
vacuum and literally holding bake sales to raise money to do
the types of programming, to get people more aware of alcohol
poisoning, try to change policies on campus so that students
are not discouraged from addressing a passed-out student and
getting them help because of fear of getting in trouble.
That is one of the issues we have tried very hard to push,
is that if a student has drunk themselves to the point where
they are passed out, where there is any concern over their
health, get them help immediately. We are trying to get
amnesty-type policies in the residence halls so the students
that do that then are not in fear of being penalized or for the
student themselves. At least we have gotten the student to the
hospital and addressed the situation.
But it varies a lot campus to campus. The awareness to the
issue is huge, and in this day and age, there is no excuse, I
think, for presidents not to be making this a central part of
their mission because we have got to protect the lives of the
students and the people in the community where our campuses
are. It seems to be getting a lot better, but funding,
particularly in these days with State cutbacks, I expect next
year is going to be a very hard funding issue for a lot of
institutions and programs like ours are the ones that you start
seeing impacted because we are not always seen as the core of
the academic mission of the campus.
Chairman Lieberman. Are programs usually funded by the
universities themselves?
Mr. Hunter. Yes. Our peer education groups, in order to be
affiliated with us, must have a faculty or staff advisor of the
campus, who is employed by the campus, working with the group.
It must be a recognized student organization, either through
the student government or through whatever student affairs
department would be hosting it, and their funding generally
comes from their health education-type budgets or student
government or student activities fees. But when they have to
rely on just student activities fees, often they are doing
supplemental fundraising, which make it very hard for them to
have the type of resources to address the issues that they want
to dedicate themselves to.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. I am very pleased to have been
joined now by Senator Tom Carper, my colleague from Delaware,
an important member of the Committee who was, before coming to
the Senate, the Governor of Delaware. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, thanks so much, and thank you
for holding this hearing. To our witnesses today, we appreciate
very much not just you joining us but your efforts in these
areas.
The issue of binge drinking comes close to home for a lot
of us. My wife and I are raising two boys, 12 and 13, and the
only binge drinking we worry about in our house is chocolate
milk shakes right now, but in a few years, we will probably
have some further worries to take into account.
I went to graduate school at the University of Delaware,
but I went to Ohio State as an undergraduate and was a member
of a fraternity there which actually runs a national campaign
that focuses on trying to reduce the incidence of drinking
among its members. But at my old fraternity house at Ohio State
about a year or so ago, we had a student who died, I think in a
room that I used to live in when I was an upperclassman at Ohio
State. So this is one that comes close to us, and I think he
died from a combination of drinking and taking drugs. Our
chapter has since been closed at Ohio State and we will have to
see what happens in the future, but that young man's life has
been snuffed out. This one comes close to home.
At Ohio State and the University of Delaware and all kinds
of colleges around the country, we have not only students from
the United States of America, but we also have students from
other countries. We similarly have American students abroad in
colleges throughout the world.
I was wondering if we have some sense of whether colleges
and universities in other countries face a similar kind of
problem with binge drinking. Is this strictly an American
phenomenon or is this something that is happening on college
campuses around the world?
Chief Nolan. If I could just--and it is not scientific or a
study, I happened to be at a meeting with some representatives
from law enforcement overseas and asked that specific question.
The only answer they really had, they certainly do have some
problems related to drinking, but they do not see it as we do.
The only reason they could give me was that in certain areas,
they are brought up in a different culture, and in many cases
are exposed to alcohol at a much earlier age than here. Their
reasoning was that when they got to the point of university, it
was not a big deal to them. It was not something that they had
the first opportunity to experience and they do not run into as
many problems. Whether that is factual, true or not, that is
the explanation I was given by law enforcement people from
overseas.
Senator Carper. Yes, sir. Thank you.
Dr. Reardon. Senator, my son last year at age 18 traveled
to Europe by himself and he visited 15 countries and I tied up
with him in Budapest. One of the things he said to me, as a
student, he was really astounded at the European students. He
said, well, they seem to have this alcohol thing--he used the
word ``booze''--he said they seem to have this booze thing
under control. He said, why is it so crazy back home? And I
said, well, that is an issue when you come back to the United
States you are going to have to deal with because it really is
crazy. So he was very aware of this and aware of the
difference. He lived with a Swiss family and he traveled
throughout all of Europe. So I think that is a significant
question to answer. Why is it out of control here, or why are
these issues----
Senator Carper. Did he have any observations, any thoughts
as to why that is the case?
Dr. Reardon. No, it was just one of these casual
statements. But the other thing Mr. Hunter is saying is that
there are universities that really are working on this and
there are other universities that are not. The extraordinary
thing about the University of Maryland is that there was a
death also in a fraternity house just two houses down from
where my son died just 5 months previous to this. So it seems
as if on some campuses, the death of a child is OK. I am
listening to Dr. Welty here and one child dies and everyone
comes down like a SWAT team, that even one child is too much. I
just think that is an extraordinary approach. I wish every
campus in the United States would look at this with the
severity that one child's death is just simply too many.
Senator Carper. Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Back on the international issue, our
organization is an international organization. We work with a
network of more than 100 campuses in Canada, a network of
campuses in Mexico dealing particularly with the impaired
driving issue there, and then Australia, New Zealand, and a few
other scattered places around the country.
The differences in how they do their program tend to be
more drinking age related, that their college students are
already of legal age to drink in those countries, so they
always have to amend the types of stuff we do here because we
are obviously concerned a bit more with the illegality factor
when we put our stuff together.
I think Canadian institutions, from some of the data I have
seen, have seen very similar issues that we are, and because of
the rural nature of a lot of the colleges in the Canadian area
and the drinking to major cities, they are doing quite a bit on
the impaired driving.
But what we have not seen as much, and granted, it is still
a fairly rare instance here in the United States, but the
alcohol poisoning, drinking themselves to death type situation
does not seem to be as apparent in other countries, which may
or may not be the fact that their cultures seem to have
ingrained it more in their everyday life versus the extreme
behaviors that we see. I think a lot of our students are going
out and drinking in the community in a very fast and
irresponsible manner, partly because they are afraid Chief
Nolan's people will be finding them and arresting them. So much
of our drinking goes on in unsupervised, unlicensed,
unregulated environments that I think that is certainly part of
the concern that we are seeing.
Senator Carper. Have you all had a chance to look at the
incidence of binge drinking by foreign students who come to
this country, who come from different cultures? How do they
behave? Do they behave similarly or differently from Americans
who have grown up here within our own culture?
Mr. Hunter. I am not aware of any specific studies or data
to that. Ancillary, I do not think foreign students are causing
the majority of the problems on our campuses that we are
seeing.
Senator Carper. My guess is you are probably right. Anyone
else, any thoughts? What I am getting at here is, is this a
peculiarly American problem? We have laws that are designed,
State laws that I helped to enact and Federal laws that we have
enacted, too, that are designed to try to make sure that young
people do not consume alcohol. They cannot buy it until they
are 21 years of age. A lot of times, we find that young people
are getting alcohol anyway, drinking illegally, sometimes under
those ages, and sometimes 21 and older drink excessive amounts
of alcohol.
Meanwhile, over in Europe and other places, where
apparently, and I have heard this anecdotally as well, families
introduce their young people to wine or to other alcoholic
beverages at an earlier age, and as a result, there is less
fascination with it when kids turn 18, 19, 20, or 21.
My sense is, my gut tells me this is something that we need
to be aware of and to be mindful of. I say that as an old
Southern Baptist who grew up in a teetotaling family and who
still does not consume much more than a glass of wine from time
to time.
One other issue I would like to raise, Mr. Chairman, if I
could, with these witnesses is the issue of identification. I
do not know if you have already talked about that or not. Have
you?
Chairman Lieberman. Chief Nolan talked somewhat about a
program that they have put into effect in the area to deal with
fake IDs, but it is a relevant question.
Senator Carper. We have spent a fair amount of time in
these halls since September 11 talking about identification--a
national identification card. I have said in a number of
responses to the media who have asked me if I thought it was a
good idea, I said if those ID cards were not much better than
the fake ones that kids are using at the University of
Delaware, or other college towns, to purchase alcohol, it may
not provide all that much in the way of enhanced security.
What are your thoughts with respect to improved IDs,
biometrics or whatever they call them? What is the term for the
ID cards that use some part of our physiology, biometrics?
Chief Nolan. The ID situation is probably one of the
largest part of the problem that we have in our area. To give
you an example--also another part of the ongoing program we
have--we check the local establishments, the bars, at least
twice a week, sometimes more often. We have been in barrooms
that would hold maximum tight 50 people and find 35 to 40 of
them with fake IDs, underage drinkers, students in the
particular establishment. This one in particular, I can tell
you, videotapes the people coming through the door, checks the
IDs, makes them sign an affidavit, and he has told me that he
is ready to just shut the doors. The IDs are so well done that
our officers have a hard time sometimes.
I maintain, especially after September 11, that there
should be some type of standardization for a driver's license
nationally and/or national ID cards with either a metallic
strip or bar-coding where an establishment can run it through
just like a credit card and immediately know whether it is a
legitimate ID and the age on it.
The other thing we are doing is we are changing some of the
charges. Prior to this, and again, this is where I think
parents would help a university, if we find them with a false
ID, they were charged with procuring liquor by a minor or what
have you, which is nothing of a major charge. We are starting
to bring forgery charges against them or altering of government
documents, which creates a court situation, because we are
getting so inundated by these problems.
The other charges, we have had parents actually, where we
charged individuals underage with--an example I can think of is
two cases of beer. The individual was charged with possession
of alcohol by a minor. We had complaints filed against the
officers and what have you for violating the individual's
rights and the parents actually came to the university and
wanted the two cases of beer given back to their son, who was
18 years old.
So I think that is where we have a gap here, that everyone,
all three entities have to work together. But IDs are a major
problem, a major problem, and that is where it all starts, that
they can get into the establishments, they can go into the
liquor stores and purchase whatever they want. I cannot blame
the business. It is a business problem also. I can tell you, I
will show you some of these IDs and I defy you to tell me that
they are phonies.
Senator Carper. Are there any best practices that you could
point us to, either States or cities or counties, where they
are doing an especially noteworthy job in this regard?
Mr. Welty. I am familiar--and actually, a number of
campuses use student IDs that are bar-coded now for a variety
of purposes, which allows students to deposit so much money to
purchase food, those kinds of things. We are actually exploring
through our council that I mentioned earlier, as a result of a
request from some of our local bar owners of allowing--
essentially, they are using a reader in their establishments
which would automatically allow them to determine whether the
student is of age or not. Again, I think that is something that
is worked out best in a local community environment. But the
technology, I think, does exist where that is possible to do.
Chief Nolan. As the Doctor said, most of it is already
available. I know the State of Connecticut's driver's licenses
are all bar-coded at the present time. They just have not moved
forward to a point where an establishment can easily read this,
which the technology is available and it is really not all that
expensive to get into.
So I think it has to be looked at on a national basis for
not only the alcohol problems but for other problems and
something set up where it would work nationally. But I would
assume most States have the identification process in place, it
is just starting to use it.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, thanks, and again, to each of
you, thank you for your good work in this regard. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Carper, thank you. Thanks for
taking the time to be here and for your interest in this
problem.
I thank each of you. You have been very helpful. We have
learned a lot. I hope we have drawn some attention to the
problem. The statistics are shocking, and Dr. Reardon, thanks
for having the strength to come and make these numbers
painfully real. If I had to say in one sentence what we ought
to try to be about, it is to have a national policy that
engages universities, educators, parents, students, and law
enforcers to ensure that no parent has to experience the
nightmare that you have been through. Your willingness to come
and talk to us about it today brings us a little bit closer to
that.
We are going to go on with these hearings and have at least
one more. There have been some references to the alcohol
industry. I want to call them in at the next hearing. It would
probably be good to have a student, maybe one who had a close
call or is involved in campus work on this subject. We are
thinking of having somebody who is either from the
entertainment industry or can comment on the messages that may
be sent by the entertainment culture about substance abuse,
including alcohol.
And then perhaps a medical professional. We had a call
after I announced these hearings in Connecticut from a doctor
in the emergency room at Yale-New Haven--a hospital,
unfortunately, that has treated a few of the students who have
come in from the universities in the area and the hospital has
some opinions.
I urge each of you to think--and as I said, we are going to
leave the record of the hearing open for 2 weeks--I want to see
if we can get the Federal Government to be helpful here, to be
constructive. There have been a few interesting ideas
specifically regarding more funding for particular programs.
Just be very aggressive about giving us your best ideas.
In the meantime, I thank you for your time and for all you
have contributed today. For now, we will adjourn this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BUNNING
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think we all agree that binge drinking is unacceptable and risky
behavior. The report by the Task Force of the National Advisory Council
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has some disturbing statistics.
It says that:
L1,400 college students die each year from alcohol-related
injuries;
L2.1 million students drove under the influence of alcohol
last year; and
Lmore than 600,000 students were assaulted by another
student who had been drinking.
Unfortunately, alcohol abuse can lead to abuse of other substances.
According to a survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration at ``HHS'', underage binge drinkers were seven times
more likely to use illegal drugs than underage kids who were not binge
drinkers.
That same report said that in 2000, almost 7 million children under
the age of 21 were binge drinkers.
We obviously have a problem with some of our students being able to
control their behavior and knowing when to say when.
And we also have a problem with underage children having easy
access to alcohol.
I don't know if these kids are getting alcohol from older students
or from going to parties or even using fake ID's in bars and liquor
stores, but as long as kids who shouldn't be drinking can easily get
beer and liquor then we really have little or no control over the
system.
Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer to solving this problem.
However, getting these children back on the right track will require an
effort by all of us, including parents, teachers, schools, local
communities, and the students themselves.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I am hoping
that they will shed some light on what else we need to be doing to keep
our young people safe.
Thank you.
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