Why "Wet Zones" Should be an Option.

In order to form a middle ground in the argument, we are proposing that campuses provide supervised “wet zones” for ages 18 and above. These zones could possibly take the form of a campus bar or a club that is sponsored, staffed, and monitored by the college it would reside in. These areas could then allow students to buy cheap alcohol while still getting a party feel and being safe. They could even potentially be self sufficient with that exact income it produces or may also provide as a source of income for the University supporting it. These “wet zones” would however have strict rules to provide student safety.

These guidelines would include:

• Commuters must give their keys and show proof of having a designated driver.
• Cuttoff limits on how much alcohol can be bought.
• Escorts back to a student's room by a supervisor with only the people the student arrived with.

 We believe that these policies will help reduce alcohol related accidents and that having a wetzone would remove the taboo of drinking on campus, which will hopefully prevent students from going to bars or parties in order to gain access to alcohol.

Dry Campus Vs. Wet Campuses

    Students drinking on college campuses has been a cultural normality for generations. In order to combat this, many campuses have a “dry campus” policy that doesn’t even allow students that are of legal age to drink to have alcohol on campus. But do these policies really stop college students from doing it? The answer is no and because of this, most colleges have removed the ban for those of legal drinking age, but that still doesn’t get rid of the problem that no matter what, underage students are going to drink. Younger students have older friends that supply alcoholic beverages to them. This enables binge drinking within the underage community. Many parents have problems with their children going to colleges with “wet” campuses due to worries of drunk driving, fighting, sexual assault, and alcohol poisoning.

Most of these concerns are valid, proven by the statistics taken by Wechsler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson in the study, “What We Have Learned From the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It.” saying that with each alcoholic drink consumed, the chances of injury increase drastically (Wechsler and Nelson 2006). Universities that are promoting a dry campus have the intentions of reducing these injuries and removing the problems that involve alcohol consumption. While wet campuses feel that they should allow students to do as they please if they are of legal age because, well, they are adults. Making that decision is something that comes along with the responsibilities of being an adult.
But, what if we could come up with a compromise that allows both sides of the argument to be satisfied? We are proposing that campuses provide “wet zones” among college campuses for ages 18 & up. You can review our proposal here.

I didn’t think it was possible to enjoy college without alcohol until I went to grad school on a dry campus. Are undergrads learning that the only way to have fun is when we're drunk?

Source: Tkaick, Christina. "I Didn’t Think It Was Possible to Enjoy College without Alcohol until I Went to Grad School on a Dry Campus." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 22 May 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Summary: Originally going to school at University of Virginia, Christina was used to seeing and living the party life. When she finished though, she realized she had a serious alcohol problem. After getting cleaned up she moved to Beirut to begin her masters at the American University of Beirut. What she didn’t realize at the time was that this University has a dry campus. She says she was happily surprised “...that there’s also plenty of people here who don’t drink much, or at all.” (Tkacik). After getting herself sober she says that she was once out with friends and “ suddenly realized, it was the first time since high school I’d had this much fun without being drunk or high. I didn’t even remember it was possible.”

Being a social person she attends school events and says she braced herself "for chaos, pushing, shoving, the general tomfoolery I’ve always associated with outdoor university events. Instead, I saw people eating and having fun, listening attentively to comedy routines and live music — all, apparently, without the influence of alcohol. There were no drunken frat guys whooping. Not one coed could be seen vomiting in the bushes, her mascara smeared down to her chin. No one was defacing school property, or using the recycling bin as a urinal. What was happening?" (Tkacik). This was a scene she had not seen before at previous events she had attended.

Quality: This article was written by someone who was a former binge drinker that has cleaned themselves up and is now sober. In her article she states her opinion on how nice a dry campus is. She is a social person and attends events around and outside of the school therefore seeing the difference between events she was used to attending and the sober events on her new campus.

Issues: This article puts most of its weight on a dry campus she lived on in another country that may be very different from a dry campus in the US. Christina even states "A few restaurants in my West Beirut neighborhood don’t even serve alcohol — some of them no doubt out of respect to their Muslim clientele, who are generally less likely to drink. " (Tkacik) showing a big cultural difference in the two areas she has been. One where there is probably at least one bar in the area and most restaurants sell alcohol on a regular basis and the other where part of the clientele doesn't normally drink. Also she only had the experience of living on one campus that did allow drinking. Who's to say that other "wet" campuses are the same. Some may not be as bad as the University of VA was or it may have just been that particular class of students at the University.

Keywords:

Drinking

Dry Campus

Graduate Student

Binge-Drinking

How to Curb Binge Drinking at U.S. Colleges: Sell Alcohol on Campus.

Source: Shavin, Naomi. "How to Curb Binge Drinking at U.S. Colleges: Sell Alcohol on Campus." New Republic. N.p., 16 Dec. 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Summary: This article was written in response to The New York Times’ article, “Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Drinking,” due to the fact that the article missed something that could help fix the drinking problem, having a bar on campus.

The article provides several examples as to why having a bar on campus could work and how it could prevent drinking related accidents. These include DUIs and DUI-related student deaths could decrease dramatically,  drinks being less susceptible to spiking and drugging, which could reduce incidents of sexual assault on campus, keeping students closer to a hospital if medical care is needed, bartender hired by the school would be incentivized to cut off students who are too intoxicated, Student groups could hold events at campus bars rather than off campus, Schools with campus bars could monitor students’ drinking habits and create more effective alcohol education programming.

Quality: This article addresses many of the problems related to alcohol related accidents and backs up its data with reputable sources such as from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The NIAAA is a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources which is sponsored by the United States Government. This leads us to believe that the article's statistics are valid and reputable.

Issues: This article bases some of its reasons off of personal experiences they had at a school in London where the author states "the drinking age is 18". Therefor separating it from the US. Also the author says that they had to wait in a line to even get in the door of this off campus bar, saying "the wait to get into one of the campus bars—Guy’s Bar—was almost always over an hour." (Shavin). Many students are not going to want to wait in a line to get into the bar when they could get into a party and get a drink almost immediately.    

Key Words:

binge drinking

on-campus bar

DUI

drinking related accidents

controlled environment
incentivized

Drinking on Campus: University of Kentucky Relaxes Its Alcohol Policy

Source: Sanburn, John. "The University of Kentucky Will Allow Drinking on Campus Again." Time. Time, 25 Apr. 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Summary: This article is about how the University of Kentucky is revoking their dry policy after off campus riots. This article shows how the university discovered why the dry policy wasn’t getting rid of the alcohol problem, and instead moving the problem off campus, which has disturbed the off-campus community.“The thought was that you could monitor this, that it was a more controlled environment, so allowing more drinking on campus may be a way for universities to regain some of that control." (Usdan) says co author of the survey Stuart Usdan.

Quality: This article references a study published in the American Journal of Health Studies showing that the data they gathered was accepted by professionals in this field. It is also a newer article and study referring back to only last year. Furthermore it references the University of Kentucky's local paper, The Lexington Herald Leader, which has a further in depth coverage of the matter.

Issues: This article seems a bit vague in the reasons why the University of Kentucky lifted its ban, making it seem that the riots were the only reason. Unfortunately, this article was written just when the university decided to lift the ban so there isn't a way of knowing whether or not this decision has proven to be effective at fixing the alcohol problem.

Key Words:

Dry policy

off-campus drinking

harm-reduction policy

on-campus bar

controlled environment

Should colleges be allowed to ban alcohol on campus?

Source: Gross, Jessica, and Mike Dang. "Should Colleges Be Allowed to Ban Alcohol on Their Campuses?" Unigo. N.p., 4 Mar. 2015. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

Summary: This article is a two sided argument about whether or not colleges should be able to ban alcohol on their campuses and also addresses important reasons why some campuses go dry.

The first half of the article, which is pro-allowing bans, compares college to a business and states that students can easily go somewhere else if these rules aren’t to their liking. The author also points out why some non-religious schools have a dry policy, such as campuses that just want to appeal to those who just don’t like to be around alcohol. Author Jessica Gross states, “Just as students should be able to pick a school with no alcohol ban, they should be able to pick a school with a dry campus. To say that no school ever should institute a ban on alcohol is to reduce the spectrum of applicants’ options to a segment of the market.” (Gross).

The second half however,compares the dry policy to the prohibition and believes that college students are going to drink anyway, so colleges should find other methods of keeping students safe. The author of this part of the article, Mike Dang, states,”College students drink—they just do….So rather than try to enforce a ban that clearly failed in our country 80 years ago on campus, colleges should be proactive in other ways to keep students safe…” (Dang). Furthermore, the author addresses the benefits of having a “wet zone,” on campus, such as how the profits from selling alcohol on campus could go to fund other programs, and how having alcohol on campus can create a strong campus community, at least from his perspective.

Quality: This article addresses both sides of the ban debate and gives supportive reasoning behind both of the points. This article is also a newer source of information that is coming straight from students instead of an outside party or study.

Issues: Author Mike Dang is a little unprofessional in some of his statements. For example, he states,” Luckily, our government learned that banning alcohol was stupid…”(Dang). The use of the word, “stupid,” feels childish, leaving room for readers to discredit his opinion.

Key words:

Dry policy

on-campus bar

Prohibition

underage drinking

What We Have Learned From the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It.

Source: Wechsler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson. "What We Have Learned From the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It." Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs 69.4 (2008): 481-90. Harvard School of Public Health. Web.

Summary: This paper by Henry Wechsler, PH.D. and Toben F. Nelson, SC.D. summarizes years of alcohol research done by the Harvard School of Public Health College on binge drinking and what influences it. This study addresses the relationship between student drinking and campus policy, what has been done to reduce the alcohol problem, and what should be done to reduce the alcohol problem.

Quality: This study was done by Harvard University, which is a very reputable college and uses references backed by reputable sources such as The American Psychological Association and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, this study covers four years of research and 120 schools across the United States.

Issues: The last study done on this was back in 2001, so this is a bit dated. The method used for this study was also a survey, which not all students that were selected for the survey responded to. In this paper, the authors include the issues of this survey. They said, "The sample was limited in at least three important ways. First, not all students who were selected to participate in the study responded to the survey... Second, we sampled a relatively small number of students within each college, thus limiting the precision of estimates for a single college. Third, we relied on self-reported responses to a questionnaire. No attempt was made to obtain measures of consumption other than self-reports." (White et al., 2005).

Key Words:

Binge Drinking

A Matter of Degree

College-level Variation

College Alcohol Study (CAS)