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.

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)