ELON COLLEGE – A survey of Elon College students indicates that both the frequency and the average amount of alcohol consumed in one sitting has declined in the past two years.
More than 850 Elon students, who were chosen at random, participated this spring in CORE, a national survey of college students’ perceptions, attitudes and beliefs related to alcohol and drugs. The survey is conducted every two years.
“Elon as most other colleges continues to have some students who drink excessively where intervention is necessary. However, the good news is most students are not binge drinking,” said Resa Walch, director of substance education and assistant professor of HPLHP.
In the survey, students also reported that the campus is more concerned today with alcohol issues than it was two years ago.
The college took initial steps to increase awareness about binge drinking after the 1997 CORE survey by appointing a committee of faculty, staff and students. That committee, which was led by Chaplain Richard McBride, recommended the creation of the position that Walch holds. Numerous campus-wide initiatives also have been undertaken in the past two years.
Walch, McBride and Smith Jackson, vice president of student life, are using a social norms model to look at the survey’s results. “The primary thrust with the social norms model, which is scientifically based, is to bombard the campus with positive norms,” Walch said. “Research indicates that student behavior will reflect positive norms. Colleges who have used these models have seen reductions in binge drinking.”
By using that model, the survey found that most Elon students don’t miss class because of alcohol, most drink five drinks, less or none per week, and more than 1,300 drink twice per month or less.
“Most of our students – four out of five – report less peer pressure to drink and comfort in refusing an offer to use alcohol or drugs,” Jackson said.
McBride credits across-the-board cooperation among students, faculty and staff for the survey’s encouraging results.
“These results encourage faculty, staff and students alike to sustain the effort of changing the campus culture to one where friends neither let friends drink to get drunk nor stand by when friends’ alcohol use is destructive to self or others,” Jackson said.
A number of additional strategies are being used to continue the initiative to reduce high-risk drinking at the college. They range from infusing substance education into the curriculum, making an interactive compact disk available to student groups, to a media campaign to shape positive drinking norms on campus.
Beginning this fall, all sections of the HED 110 Wellness course, which all freshmen are required to take, will include in-depth instruction about substance education. “All our freshmen will receive the same educational information,” Walch said.
“One of our primary goals is to infuse substance education into the curriculum,” Walch said. “We were able to accomplish this with a grant from the Preventive Research Institution that allowed 35 faculty and staff members to complete a week-long training program to become certified to teach this curriculum. We now have 40 people trained to teach the curriculum, which is called Prime for Life – On Campus Talking About Alcohol.”
Walch said Elon is unique in that it has infused this instruction into a required course in the curriculum. “This is a critical part of changing students’ attitudes and behavior about alcohol,” she says.
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