Shifting the College Drinking Culture

College Drinking: Not a "harmless rite of passage"

Environmental Management: Vital to creating change

PartySafe@Cal: Reducing Harm associated with drinking and parties around campus

In the News

Environmental Management: Vital to creating change

Traditional prevention approaches have targeted individual drinkers with information and treatment. While individually focused programs are necessary, they are insufficient by themselves to create significant or long-lasting changes in the campus and community environment. They leave intact the conditions that drive the appeal and availability of alcohol - virtually ensuring that they continue. Environmental management is a broader approach to prevention. It pointedly addresses the social, economic, legal, academic, physical and other factors that shape the "alcohol environment" for all members of the community. Successful interventions must operate simultaneously to reach individual students, the student body as a whole, and the greater college community.

The environmental management approach is yielding results nationally and at Cal. Evaluation from a six-year statewide research project found that Berkeley campus/community alcohol prevention efforts resulted in:

• 7% decrease in underage student alcohol consumption ("in past 30 days") (2003-2008)
• 30% increase in undergraduates who did not consume alcohol in the past year (2003-2008)
• 29% decrease in undergraduates reporting some kind of serious personal problems (such as suicidality, being hurt or injured, sexual assault) at least once during the past semester as a result of drinking (2003-2008)
• 8% decrease in undergraduates reporting some kind of minor personal problem (such as missing class, memory loss, hangover, vomiting) at least once during the past semester as a result of drinking (2003-2008)
• 15-60% decrease in student who think it would be easy to very easy to find a variety of sources within two miles of campus where they could buy alcohol without showing an ID (2003-2008)

The study designated all UC and CSU campuses as either "intervention" or "control" sites. As the following chart shows, "high" level intervention campuses (including Cal) experienced a greater reduction in percent of students being drunk in any setting than medium intervention campuses. This decrease is in strong contrast to the increases in student drunkenness at both the low intervention and the control campuses.

"Dosage" Correlated to Degree of Impact

The Safer California Universities Study Progress Report, March 2008 and 2009