By Anna Lis

“You are more likely to forget your actions when you are under the influence of alcohol” is not exactly groundbreaking news.
Most students know the dangers of alcohol, so retelling what they already know is not the best tactic. Programs like AlcoholEdu focus so much on scaring students that they just come across as laughable.

It does make the most sense to warn students about the dangers of drinking before they actually drink. However, making students complete a program that lasts an hour and has to be completed by the start of the school year is going to make more students view the program as the nuisance rather than the drinking. Megan Dowd, GSB ’18, said that she already knew almost everything the program was supposed to be teaching.

Only 7% of universities try to restrict the number of outlets selling alcohol , according to the University of Minnesota. A more effective strategy for schools might be preventing the actual selling of alcohol in the first place. On this matter Kate Wolper, FCRH ’18 said, “AlcoholEdu does not prevent alcohol use on campus the way that limiting the ready access of alcohol would.”

If you make something more difficult to get, people will be less likely to make the effort. When asked if the difficulty of getting alcohol affected her drinking, a Boston College freshman, Mary McDonough, said, “It does not discourage me, but I drink less because of it. If I was at a big school that had lots of parties, I would be drunk so much more.” This reiterates the point that having easy access to alcohol is more conducive to drinking. Dowd also remarked on what she thought the school could do as “realistically, probably nothing.”

In bigger state universities with Greek life and less strict rules, alcohol tends to be more pervasive on campus. Students at Rutgers University are not required to take an AlcoholEdu course and attribute this to their school’s relaxed attitude when it comes to on campus drinking. One student said the major place where students partake in partying is the fraternity houses.

The Greek houses make attending a party as easy as walking a block from your dorm. The relaxed attitude of the Rutgers UNiversity administration only fuels this large drinking culture. Perhaps if the administration had a more active stance and program aimed at alcohol education and prevention that included a strong enforcement component, the culture would not be nearly as pervasive.

By contrast, at Pepperdine University, students are required to take an online program and are presented with policy-driven talks about alcohol on campus. This helps students see not only the consequences that drinking will have on their bodies, but also what will happen if they are caught.
Perhaps another solution to decrease underage drinking is to have stricter rules when it comes to getting caught. Fordham already has a stricter set of rules than most schools.

This list of rules can be easily found in the student handbook on the Fordham website. The university has very specific policies that apply to various types of situations involving alcohol.

The rules are mostly clear-cut, but the enforcement is often lacking. If more enforcement occurred on (and off) campus, perhaps not as much underage drinking would occur. In a discussion about strict rules at schools, a Rowan University freshman, Antonia Nuzzolo, said, “Stricter rules would definitely help. If you are caught with weed on campus, you cannot live here anymore. If that was the same for alcohol, I probably would not drink.”

According to a New York Times article, a survey found that students whose colleges “required parental notification, involvement from the criminal-justice system or requirement to join an alcohol treatment program would be less likely to drink than those who just had to pay fines and received warnings.”

Alcohol use has become practically synonymous with the archetypal college experience. In fact, it can be a contributing factor to how students select which schools they will attend. Programs such as AlcoholEdu are more of a waste of time than a warning.

The only solution to underage drinking on campus may be trying to enforce different rules and just allowing it to run its course. The drinking age was legally changed to 21 in the 1980s, so the idea of anyone above the age of 18 not being allowed to drink is still relatively new and may just need to run its course.

Anna Lis, FRCH ’18, is a Communications and Media Studies major from Ridgewood, NJ.