UMass tackles alcohol abuse

It tries to dispel party stereotype

Across UMass-Amherst, ads like the one above trumpet survey results showing alcohol use is less pervasive than students assume. (University Health Services at University of Massachusetts at Amherst)

For years, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has labored under the stereotype of a party school with a deeply entrenched drinking culture. Deserved or not, the "Zoo Mass" reputation fueled a self-perpetuating problem, administrators say: Some students drank heavily because they believed everyone else was.

But in an aggressive campaign that is winning national attention, the university is taking aim at alcohol abuse by chipping away at the stereotype. Across campus, posters and bus and newspaper advertisements with the slogan "We got the facts from you" trumpet survey results showing that alcohol use is far less pervasive than students assume.

Two years after launching the so-called social norms campaign, health officials say they are seeing striking results, with recent student surveys indicating a sharp decline in binge drinking. The university has coupled the marketing with tighter regulations and enforcement, as well as expanded prevention services.

Colleges across the country have turned to such campaigns in an attempt to dilute the drinking culture that dominates many campuses. The goal of the programs is to turn peer pressure into a positive force and convince hard-partying students that, while it might be hard to believe at a Friday night beer blast, they are the minority.

"The perception is that heavy-drinking students are the norm," said Sally Linowski, who directs UMass-Amherst's Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Prevention. "So some students will drink to that expectation. Perception can become reality."

But the approach has its critics, who say these efforts are ineffective and may even backfire because they remind students that many of their peers do drink. Some of these critics prefer a strict, low-tolerance approach to underage drinking.

"At large universities, students react to what their friends and their immediate peer group do, not what the entire school does," said Henry Wechsler, a specialist on collegiate drinking at the Harvard School of Public Health and the author of "Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses." " 'Students drink,' that's the message that gets through."

Colleges like UMass-Amherst say marketing alone will not solve the persistent problem, and are supplementing myth-busting efforts with an array of educational programs and enforcement tactics. Some colleges have banned kegs and drinking games for the upcoming semester in hopes of curbing the tradition of wild weekend parties and benders, which are blamed for a multitude of health and safety problems.

As colleges prepare for the new school year, the long-running debate over alcohol policies has intensified, with college presidents at more than 120 schools, including Dartmouth, Tufts, and the University of Massachusetts, urging lawmakers to consider lowering the legal drinking age to 18.

Dubbed the Amethyst Initiative, the petition contends that the 21-year-old drinking age has created "a culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking' - often conducted off-campus."

The group Mothers Against Drunk Driving says that lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes, and many university leaders oppose the idea.

At UMass-Amherst, 68 percent of men and 58 percent of women report drinking five or more drinks in a row at least once in the past two weeks, according to the latest surveys. Both figures are well above the national average, but represent progress from years past. Since 2003, overall binge drinking has dropped 26 percent, and frequent heavy drinking - defined as binging three or more times in the past two weeks - is down 38 percent.

Such gains have garnered national recognition, including a $200,000 grant last month from the US Department of Education to expand and evaluate the campaign, potentially creating a blueprint for other colleges.

Administrators say the campaign sends a clear message to students that rampant drinking will not be tolerated.

"There's a feeling that the campus is wrestling with this issue, instead of turning a blind eye," said Martha Nelson Patrick, director of community relations at UMass-Amherst and cochairwoman of a campus-community coalition created to curb high-risk drinking.

Yet the university continues to struggle to reverse its image as a rowdy, beer-soaked campus, a perception fed by riots and violence the past few years. Many on campus believe that the university's reputation has attracted students prone to partying, and deterred those who are not.

In response, the university has implemented stricter alcohol policies and stronger penalties for violators, including a screening and intervention program that treated 1,200 students last year. The university urges incoming students to take an online alcohol education course and surveys hundreds of undergraduates about their behavior and beliefs around alcohol.

The university has also stepped up efforts with area bars and liquor stores to prevent alcohol sales to minors, and is working closely with town police departments to crack down on off-campus parties.

In and around Boston, many colleges say they have made concerted efforts to inform students about the dangers of drinking. At Northeastern University, for example, resident assistants meet with students in dormitories at the start of school to discuss alcohol policies and the health impact of excessive drinking.

"It's not 'just say no,' " said Ed Klotzbier, vice president for student affairs at Northeastern. "It's about wanting students to be safe."

A new six-year study at the University of Virginia found that college's social norms campaign substantially reduced the number of alcohol-related incidents. The university campaign stressed that students drink less than their peers expect and urged students to intervene if their friends were drinking dangerously.

The study reported that nearly 2,000 fewer university students were injured in alcohol-related events in 2006 than in 2001, and 1,511 fewer drove under the influence of alcohol.

Yet some UMass-Amherst students doubt that peer pressure plays an appreciable role in students' decision to drink.

"I generally think there is a core of people that believe work-hard, play-hard is a legitimate lifestyle," said Christopher Reeves, a sophomore from Shirley. "They definitely understand the need for a balance, but sometimes the range of the extremes is too large."

But others say the university has made solid progress in changing the college's drinking culture.

"It's not the same Zoo Mass it was before," said Kate Olesin, a senior from Princeton, Mass., and former resident assistant in a dormitory for upperclassmen.

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com. Correspondent Will McGuinness contributed to this report.