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 After such an incident, students are generally not referred to the
campus health center for alcohol screening or intervention,
researchers led by Debra H. Bernat from University of Maryland in
College Park found.
For the study, they asked directors of campus police or security to
complete a survey regarding their usual practices following serious,
underage and less-serious alcohol incidents on and off campus.
Even for serious or underage alcohol violations, which likely
reflect illegal behavior, only one-third of colleges reported
consistently issuing criminal charges or a citation to the drinker.
For serious off-campus incidents, approximately 40 percent of
colleges reported consistently referring students to an alcohol
education program and offering counseling or treatment, compared to
16 percent for on-campus incidents, the authors report in
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Larger public schools and schools located in small towns were more
likely to take disciplinary action following drinking incidents than
smaller private schools and those in large cities.
Attitude made a difference too, the authors report. Colleges that
reported that student drinking was a major problem, as opposed to
not a major problem, were more likely to consistently refer students
involved in serious drinking incidents to the health center.
Low citation rates may undermine alcohol enforcement efforts by
removing more severe consequences for drinking, the researchers
suggest, but they acknowledge that it is still unclear what actions
are best for curbing alcohol-related problems on college campuses.
The report is a step toward understanding how campus security
departments respond to alcohol incidents, they write.
“It tells us just enough to suggest the next study or several
studies,” said Robert F. Saltz, a senior scientist at the Prevention
Research Center in Oakland, California who wasn’t involved in the
research.
One way to strategically decrease alcohol incidents on campus is to
strengthen prevention enforcement measures, rather than reactionary
enforcement, Saltz told Reuters Health.
For example, rather than waiting for a serious injury to occur at a
fraternity party and then disciplining the entire fraternity, a
college could strengthen its proactive enforcement by routinely
breaking up larger parties and citing the host or strengthening its
traffic violation enforcement on nights and weekends, which would
help prevent dangerous incidents, he said.
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The study suggests there is still a lot of room to assess how
college campuses address alcohol violations, said Sion Kim Harris, a
substance abuse researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston who
was not part of the new report.
“As (the authors) discuss, given that really mostly what campus
security police do is refer these incidents to internal departments
versus criminal charges, it’s really important then what these other
departments will do,” which this study does not address, Harris told
Reuters Health.
On-campus crime reports are declining in general but the number of
arrests for alcohol and drug violations is on the rise, which may be
due to more violations or stricter enforcement over the years, she
said.
“What we think is happening is colleges are getting more strict
about enforcing their policies,” Harris said.
Looking at a college’s website, and specifically its alcohol policy
and any statistics it has available, can give parents an idea of the
attitudes at different schools, Harris said. She also suggested
families visit collegedrinkingprevention.gov.
“Just as a parent I would recommend that parents really review
alcohol and drug policies with children so there’s an understanding
of what are the supposed consequences,” she said. “Even though the
level of enforcement of these things may not be so great, it’s still
important that students know.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1rPSkxA Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental
Research, online July 17, 2014.
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