Virtually all ND students and alumni have either done it or have seen it happening around them and experienced the unpleasant side effects. Bluntly stated, too many Notre Dame students drink till they puke -- and leave the foul consequences for their classmates to wipe up.
Disgusting as it is, that image may finally provide the impetus for a reversal of campus attitudes about alcohol abuse. Taking a cue from the anti-smoking movement, Notre Dame is mounting a campaign designed to help students recognize the secondhand effects of binge drinking in much the same way they already recognize and refuse to tolerate the unhealthy effects of secondhand cigarette smoke.
Notre Dame is not alone in grappling with this problem. Binge drinking, defined in a 1995 Harvard School of Public Health study as four drinks (for women) or five (for men) in a single sitting one or more times within a two-week period, has reached epidemic proportions on U.S. campuses. It is by far the most frequent cause of a host of college nightmares: academic underachievement and failure, vandalism, indecent public behavior, fights, sexual assault (including date rape), accidental death, even murder.
Notre Dame's Office of Residence Life handled 201 alcohol-related disciplinary incidents last year, 40 percent of the total caseload. That number does not include hundreds of other abusive drinking incidents handled by hall rectors and their staffs or cases that simply went unreported. Each year about 20 ND students are taken to the hospital for alcohol-poisoning symptoms.
From hangovers to missed classes, arguments with friends, injuries, and arrests for underage drinking or drunk-driving accidents, the firsthand effects of binge drinking have been well documented. The secondhand effects can be just as devastating.
The experience of Mary, a Notre Dame freshman who asked that her real name not be used, is typical of many classmates: "My roommate's date [at a hall-sponsored dance] got so drunk he threw up in our room. Somebody had to clean up the mess; somebody had to get the guy home — and since I wasn't drinking, it sort of fell on my shoulders."
The night before two important tests, ND freshman Paul was in a hospital emergency room with his passed-out roomie. "I got a D on one test and asked to delay the other because I wasn't prepared," Paul says. "My grades in both classes suffered because of someone else's stupidity, and I really resent that."
Henry Wechsler, the Harvard social psychologist who conducted the study on secondhand effects of binge drinking, has heard similar anecdotes. His research team surveyed more than 17,000 students on 140 campuses nationwide -- Notre Dame among them. Sixty-eight percent of the students reported having had their studies or sleep interrupted by binge drinkers. More than half said they'd had to baby-sit a drunken student the way Mary and Paul did. Fully 87 percent reported having experienced one or more of the eight secondhand binge-drinking problems listed in Wechsler's survey.
So why do students put up with abusive drinkers in their lives and dorm rooms while promptly ejecting anyone who dares set fire to a tobacco product?
"Attitudes," says Wechsler. "There was a time in America when everyone said, ‘You can't get people to stop smoking — everyone does it.' But after decades of educating people about the hazards of smoking, and after establishing the rights of nonsmokers to breathe clean air, smoking is no longer tolerated in virtually any public place."
Administrators at Notre Dame hope the same process can eventually bring binge drinking on campus under control.
Their strategy amounts to a two-pronged attack: Educate students about the harmful secondhand effects of binge drinking and enforce University rules that protect the rights of nonbingers.
"Education is better than policy at changing attitudes," says Patricia A. O'Hara, Notre Dame's vice president of student affairs. "Students will often risk disciplinary action and break a university rule if they consider the activity socially acceptable, but not many will engage in the same activity if they risk alienating their friends."
For the same reason, O'Hara believes an outright campus ban on alcohol would fail. "Notre Dame was a dry campus for many years through the 1960s. Alcohol abuse was a problem then, just as it was in the '70s and early '80s, when our policies were far more lenient. It's still a problem today under more restrictive rules. A dry-campus policy is not likely to change how students drink, but where."
Notre Dame's current alcohol regulations, set forth in seven detailed pages of Du Lac, seem clear enough: Students are expected to comply with Indiana law, which says 21 is the legal drinking age. The University will enter a private residence room to enforce the law if drinking in the room becomes public.
Critics, however, argue that the "if" wording of the policy encourages a drink-but-don't-get-caught mentality. Students confirm that residence hall parties with binge drinking still take place, often attended by underage freshmen and sophomores. Drinking games like "quarters" (bounce the coin in the beer glass; you miss, you chug) are still common, though forbidden by Du Lac. All one needs to do is not become public enough to prompt intervention by the hall staff.
Nevertheless, O'Hara believes Notre Dame's alcohol policy takes the right approach, allowing personal freedom within the law but stern consequences for violators. "Police don't invade homes looking for underage drinkers unless a residence has been called to their attention," she says. "We follow the same procedure. Notre Dame prohibits the use of alcohol in all common spaces and will enter private rooms if brought to our attention because of problems like noise, number of people or intoxication."
O'Hara emphasizes that Notre Dame wants to maintain its highly residential character and allow students to socialize in a healthy manner. To that end, she says, nonbinging students must learn to recognize the harmful secondhand effects of those who overindulge and feel empowered to report such behavior. That's where the study conducted by Wechsler becomes useful, providing hard data that reinforces what most students know deep down: Binge drinkers don't just hurt themselves.
Wechsler suggests a "12-step program" for universities similar to what Alcoholics Anonymous demands of individuals: The first step is to honestly assess the damage of binge drinking and admit you have a problem.
Fearful of negative publicity or future liability lawsuits, many university presidents have kept a low profile on their prevention efforts, says Wechsler. But under the leadership of Father Edward Malloy, CSC, Notre Dame has taken the perilous first step. In his address to the faculty last fall, Malloy acknowledged that student binge drinking at ND is worse than the national average. The University has participated in four studies in as many years, he said, and the results confirm that "over one-half of our students report behavior that experts characterize as binge drinking."
Notre Dame has been addressing addiction problems for a decade: The Office of Alcohol and Drug Education was created in 1987 to offer assessment and treatment services. But it has taken a decidedly different direction in the past few years with coordinator Gina Poggione in charge. The emphasis now is as much on empowering nonbinging students as on treating problem drinkers.
As Wechsler notes in his program, "By focusing on those who suffer from the secondhand effects of binge drinking, colleges could mobilize [students] to assert their right to live free from injury and harm created by the binge drinking of their peers."
Among the office's creations is a student group called Flip Side that organizes nonalcoholic outings and activities — everything from innertube sledding to Chicago museum trips. Flip Side is not a temperance crusade. The goal is to eliminate the "Let's get drunk because there's nothing to do around here" syndrome.
"Like most organizations of its type, Flip Side is fighting a ‘geek' persona applied by students who party," Poggione admits. "But the group now has more than 200 paid members with the number increasing each year, and that tells me a lot of students are committed to the cause."
She points out that planning activities requires a great deal of energy and creativity. All too often, she says, students exhausted from their studies during the week simply take the easy way out on the weekends and pop open a beer or wander over to a party. "There's no effort involved. Just show up and drink."
That's one reason why Poggione has suggested more events and classes be scheduled on Friday afternoons and evenings — a time normally avoided because of student gravitation toward happy-hour gatherings to start the weekend early.
The alcohol and drug education office also has trained a team of peer educators -- essentially students teaching other students about healthy attitudes toward alcohol use. Many of the educators are students who at one time went through treatment for binge-drinking episodes. Their experiences ensure that they don't come off sounding like sanctimonious do-gooders, says Poggione.
Faculty involvement is also desperately needed, she says. As an example of what can be done, she points to the efforts of psychology professor George Howard, who teaches a section of University Seminar for freshmen called The Psychology of Healthy Lifestyles. Howard includes, as a voluntary part of the course, Friday night dinners at his home or activities elsewhere. Students are welcome to bring friends. Sometimes dinner is followed by a guest speaker or group discussion of such campus issues as race relations, dating and sexuality and, yes, alcohol abuse. Attendance at the events has been excellent.
"Getting freshmen off to an enjoyable, alcohol-free start to their weekends each Friday evening might make an important difference in how their social lives develop at Notre Dame," Howard says. The course is not preoccupied with alcohol education; it is simply one method of showing young students they don't have to spill their brain cells into a beer can to have fun.
The course also serves as a psychology experiment. Howard surveys his students about their use of alcohol throughout the semester and compares the data with responses from students in two other University Seminar courses in psychology that serve as controls. Although the results are not conclusive, Howard's students' alcohol consumption was 40 percent lower than that of the control groups.
Despite such encouraging results, Notre Dame's war against binge drinking probably will not be won in the near future. In the Harvard study and in others that preceded it, binge drinking was discovered to be more prevalent at:
-- schools located in the north-central to northeast portion of the country;
-- four-year colleges rather than two-year;
-- private schools in nonmetropolitan areas;
-- schools where the weather is frequently cloudy;
-- schools with big-time football programs and tailgating traditions.
These characteristics, which perfectly describe Notre Dame, are not likely to change.
On the other hand, significant progress has been made in laying the foundation for a long-term, grassroots campaign. The administration and Office of Alcohol and Drug Education alone can't change student binge drinking habits, says Poggione. "We're not out to be the abstinence police. Part of our mission is to help people who may or may not realize they have a problem with drug or alcohol abuse. But we also have an obligation to support those who choose to swim against the social tide and drink responsibly or not at all. The only way to do that is by creating a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a place where students don't feel they ave to medicate themselves to make friends and have relationships."
Each year a graduating class departs and a freshman class arrives at Notre Dame. This year's progress in student drinking behavior can become next year's relapse if continuity crumbles and student interest wanes. Given enough time and steadfast support, however, students might yet learn to trust the intelligence that got them to Notre Dame in the first place and reject behavior they already know is destructive.
But it will be a long struggle. ¨