Every facet of American higher education - creating a safe and stimulating learning environment, maintaining world class academic standards, sustaining student health and wellness, developing good working relationships with the surrounding community, and ensuring the institution's fiscal integrity and longevity - is made more difficult if the surrounding culture accepts and leaves high risk college drinking and party practices unchallenged. Traditional alcohol education approaches have not created significant or long-lasting changes in the campus and community environment in which students make decisions about alcohol use. They leave intact the conditions that drive the appeal and availability of alcohol - virtually ensuring that they continue.

PartySafe@Cal is collaborating with numerous campus and community organizations to introduce environmental management strategies - to restructure both the campus and community environment that can lead students to make safer, healthier, and legal choices about alcohol use.. Research supports the environmental management approach. A recent evaluation of ten campuses and community coalitions found small but significant decreases in student alcohol use and related problems at the five campuses that implemented the greatest number of environmental change strategies, compared with control group campuses.

Key components of the PartySafe@Cal program include:

• "Most Students Do PartySafe@Cal": a social norms marketing and outreach program to correct student misperceptions about drinking and party norms.
• Consistent and visible enforcement of effective campus and community alcohol policies and laws;
• Safe and responsible party hosting and beverage service: "Catch 'em doin' it right".
• Harm reduction and risk management training and education;
• Disciplinary referrals and brief motivational interviews and follow up.
• Sober Weekend - An annual challenge to abstain from alcohol for three days.

Getting Results: The California Universities Research Project shows that there is a 20 percent drop in reported intoxication at off campus parties at participating campuses in their study - a fairly sizeable effect; means hundreds fewer drunken students on any given weekend around campus. And Berkeley is among those campuses that has had the greatest impact on student drinking, perhaps because of the multiple programs and collaborations in action.