An empirical assessment of the impact of RIT's student alcohol policy on drinking and binge drinking behavior

Binge drinking among college and university students has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In part, this attention has prompted administra tors of higher education to create policies aimed at preventing drinking on campus. The purpose of this work is to empirically examine the impact of a recently adopted alcohol prohibition policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) on student drinking and binge drinking behaviors. To accom plish this task we administered a survey to a group of randomly selected st udents (n=303) asking them a variety of questions including questions about their drinking patterns. Both our bivariate and multivariate results indic ate that students living in areas impacted by the alcohol policy are less l ikely to consume alcohol than students living in areas on campus and off ca mpus where they are permitted to drink if they are of legal age. However, R IT's alcohol policy does not appear to have any impact on binge drinking, t he type of drinking that most often concerns students, parents, and univers ity administrators. These results question the effectiveness of university alcohol prohibition policies like the one adopted at RIT. As discussed in t he conclusion, other policy approaches may be more effective at dealing wit h the problem.