A recent MSU study says undergraduate students are drinking more often on days of celebration than during the week - and some students agree.
The study questioned about 1,060 undergraduate students last spring to see when excessive drinking occurred. The objective was to target the phenomenon of high-risk drinking and use the data to teach students to drink less and watch out for their friends on these occasions.
No-preference freshman Adriane Bean said most students drink on holidays and game days because it’s an opportunity to get together with friends and have a good time.
“I think students are looking for any reason to get together,” she said. “It’s kind of the college lifestyle.”
The MSU study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, also found students are 12 percent more likely to get drunk on the Saturday of the University of Michigan vs. MSU football game than they would on a regular football game Saturday. Bean said the rivalry between the two schools fuels a need to celebrate more than a regular football game.
Dennis Martell, health educator for Olin Health Center and a principal investigator for the study, said it wasn’t rocket science to find out students are drinking more on days of celebration.
“People tend to throw out the normal rules,” Martell said. “They need to use some protocol with these type of events.”
According to a 2001 Harvard School of Public Health study, binge drinking - five consecutive drinks for a man or four consecutive drinks for a woman - has remained constant in the past 10 years despite the increase in alcohol-education campaigns.
Helen Stubbs, spokeswoman for the U. S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, said traditional alcohol-education programs have been ineffective in reducing high-risk drinking in the past because they don’t look at the broad environment of student life.
“That isn’t a reason to say that isn’t a problem that can be solved,” Stubbs said.
She said campaigns that look at actions of the majority of students, such as MSU study, have worked for other college campuses.
Fliers, posters and advertisements have been distributed throughout campus, and the celebration drinking-awareness campaign will continue through the semester, said Jasmine Greenamyer, a health educator for Olin. The campaign might run public service announcements on the MSU movie channel, she said.
Biology senior Elizabeth Fortuna said posting information for students is a good way to bring alcohol awareness to campus, but it won’t solve the problem. She said personal stories about the risks of alcohol have more of an impact.
But some students don’t believe the campaign would change students’ drinking habits.
“Students almost take that as a joke,” Bean said.
Stephanie Korneffel can be reached at korneff2@msu.edu.
