Addressing Alcohol Awareness

As any student who has recently read Boston University’s BU Today should know that this week is National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week. On the surface, the concept of a week devoted to spreading awareness of alcohol might sound well-intentioned, but superfluous. Alcohol is ubiquitous on a college campus; the idea that college students need to be made more aware of its presence seems silly.

Yet last Wednesday, BU Today announced that it would cover the issue of alcohol on campus fully and examine the influence of drinking and partying on campus culture. That first article included a survey to poll students on drinking habits, and gather data to be used in this week’s coverage.

Conclusive studies about students’ drinking habits have been conducted at other campuses in other parts of the country. The Harvard School of Public Health’s College Alcohol Study collected information on the alcohol consumption of almost 18,000 students from 140 campuses, and found that the median number of drinks per week a college student has is 1.5.

Photo by Flickr user cote

But when asking students how many drinks they consumed, on average, per week, BU Today’s survey did not include one or two drinks per week as an option, and the highest number of drinks per week one could select was six or more. The survey also did not account for distribution of drinking throughout week. By the survey’s standards, the student who has one glass of wine with dinner every night and the student who drinks twelve shots of tequila two nights a week are the same. Students’ comments to the survey on the BU Today website expressed skepticism about how useful the data would be to anyone.

Comments on the articles that have gone up this week, however, have expressed skepticism about the concept of an Alcohol Awareness week on the whole. The articles contained data from outside studies and personal stories from students, but several students are still skeptical about whether or not Alcohol Awareness Week will affect alcohol consumption at all.

“People are still going to drink,” one sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences told the Quad in an interview on Tuesday. “They think they’re young and invincible.” She speculated that the Awareness Week would have little effect on drinking habits, which would inevitably climb during the upcoming Halloween weekend.

“Awareness is always a good idea,” said another CAS student, who also chose to remain anonymous. “but not many people are going to learn from it, Everyone knows alcohol has an effect on you, what different kinds of alcohol do to you. But it doesn’t stop people from going out and drinking.”

National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week will host events at GSU between 11 and 2 on Wednesday and Friday. Activities include a virtual bar and screenings of Public Service Announcements about the dangers of alcohol.

About Kelly Dickinson

Kelly is a CAS/COM senior double-majoring in Psychology and Film. She was the editor-in-chief last year, but she ceded to Ingrid in a mostly-bloodless coup. Right now, she's Producing on QuadCast, checking off her BU bucket-list and hunting for one of those "job" things.

View all posts by Kelly Dickinson →

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *