What colleges are doing about student binge drinking - A survey of collegeadministrators

In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed 734 US college administrators to learn what colleges were doing to prevent binge drinking. Respondents rated the severity of student alcohol-abuse pr oblems and described prevention efforts and institutional investments in pr evention infrastructure. Prevention practices were widespread in the areas of general education about alcohol, use of policy controls to limit access to alcohol, restricting advertising at home-game sporting events, and alloc ation of living space to alcohol-free dormitories. Programming was less pre valent for more targeted alcohol education, outreach, and restrictions on a lcohol advertising in campus media. Nationally, most of the surveyed colleg es reported having a campus alcohol specialist, many had task forces, and a bout half were performing in-house data collection. Less common were progra m evaluations, community agreements, or neighborhood exchanges. Prevention practices varied with institutional characteristics and the surveyed admini strators' perceptions of the severity of alcohol problems.