According to the “Just the Facts” campaign being launched at the University this semester, two out of three WUSTL students have four or fewer drinks when they party.
The campaign plans to point out to students and administrators that the majority of University students are making moderate decisions with regard to alcohol consumption.
“This campaign is an innovative, positive approach to reducing high-risk drinking on campus,” said Melissa Ruwitch, coordinator of health promotion and wellness. “The message is that most University students drink moderately or not at all.”
Just the Facts does not condone drinking or judge students who drink, Ruwitch said. It simply gives them the facts and leaves the decision about their own behavior up to them.
The statistics presented in the campaign are based on information provided by University students in the Survey of College Alcohol Norms and Behavior in spring 2003. The Education Development Center, an international, nonprofit organization, administered the survey to a random sampling of WUSTL students through the mail.
The results indicate that University students drink less alcohol than their peers perceive they do.
Correcting that misperception may help students make more-informed decisions about their own drinking patterns, leading to a reduction in high-risk drinking, Ruwitch said.
More than 300 posters, featuring a photo of several University students, have been placed around the Hilltop Campus to promote the campaign.
Since 2001, the University participated in a national study on efficacy of this approach, called the Social Norms Marketing Research Project. The project was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the U.S. Department of Education, which provided $2,000 to help start the University’s campaign.
“We are raising supplemental funds to sustain the campaign,” Ruwitch said.
Preliminary results of the campaign at other universities show an approximate 20 percent reduction in high-risk drinking.
According to Ruwitch, researchers have established that college students tend to grossly overestimate the number of their peers who engage in high-risk alcohol consumption. This misperception is believed to influence students to drink more heavily.
In other words, students may feel pressured to drink heavily because they believe everyone else is doing it.
Traditional approaches to alcohol abuse prevention on campus focus on the problem of behavior and have a clear “don’t do it” message, Ruwitch said.
“By contrast, in this approach, we report the factual information about the drinking levels on campus,” she said.
“One could argue that the facts do not show moderate drinking. But remember that the survey results tell us that most students are not drinking or are having up to four drinks when they party, and that ‘when they party’ does not say for how many hours.
“Many factors contribute to whether a student is drinking a dangerous amount, such as the rate at which they drink, the height and weight of the student, whether they have eaten and whether they have a medical condition.”
The campaign committee, made up of students, faculty and staff, hopes that providing students with accurate information about peers’ alcohol use may lead to changes in perceptions of drinking norms on campus, which may lead to more students making informed decisions about their own behavior and fewer students engaging in high-risk drinking.
The campaign is not a solution on its own. It does not replace any other research-based efforts to reduce high-risk drinking and improve the health of our community.
“It’s important that we take a multifaceted approach to the issue of high-risk drinking,” said Karen Levin Coburn, assistant vice chancellor for students. “The campaign is one of the approaches that has had promising results elsewhere.
“Other efforts include the ‘Our Choices’ peer-education program, changes in policies and planning that promote safer large social events, increased training for residence assistants and residence hall staff and more consistent intervention and referral of students who have abused alcohol.”
For more information on the Just the Facts campaign, go online to justthefacts.wustl.edu.