The following is an OP-ED piece a colleague and I have written for a local Philly newspaper...I share it here FYI

Back to the Future: What’s New in Response to College Drinking
By Robert J. Chapman, PhD & Stephen F. Gambescia, PhD
Drexel University—Philadelphia, PA
College of Nursing & Health Professions

With the approach of Labor Day and its symbolic close of summer comes another annual event that hearkens the change of seasons: Back to the classroom. In colleges & universities across the country administrators are acutely aware of the perennial issue of student drinking, given its potentially adverse academic and public health consequences, not to mention being in the midst of our current economic recession, the fiscal impact—retaining students through graduation naturally makes for sound fiscal policy.

Alcohol and collegiate life have been social contemporaries since Thomas Jefferson noticed its affects on good student form at the University of Virginia and butlers distributed wine and beer to students at Yale and Harvard, which were easily dispensed from the “Buttery,” adjacent to the Commons and an integral part of colonial collegiate life. But the convivial drinking of collegians in centuries past has been replaced by the ubiquitous consumption of contemporary students, approximately 25% of which are described as “frequent” (2 or more times in a 2-week period) “binge” drinkers (having 5 or more standard drinks in an outing, 4 or more for women).
So pervasive is collegiate drinking that colleges have attempted to control consumption. One particular approach that has been effective is called, “environmental management.” Included are five strategies:

1. Offer alcohol-free social, extracurricular, and public service options
2. Create a health-promoting normative environment
3. Restrict the marketing and promotion of alcoholic beverages both on and off
campus
4. Limit alcohol availability
5. Increase enforcement of laws and policies

In short, these steps to influence the campus environment have resulted in changes in collegiate drinking; most good, but some give pause for reflection. Although campus drinking has been reduced, “frequent binge drinkers” have tended to move off-campus to avoid increased enforcement of alcohol policies. This shift increases certain other high-risk and dangerous student practices; namely, drinking and driving as well as drinking in unsupervised and clandestine locations where excessive consumption is encouraged and alcohol poisoning is not monitored. Both of these consequences may serve to alienate residents of the community in which such drinking occurs thus straining any historic “town-gown” tensions.

As college personnel have become aware of this shift in student drinking behavior, they have changed their strategies. Most effective in encouraging a proactive response is the use of campus-community coalitions. Such partnerships of administrative and student groups “on-campus” with residents, businesses, law enforcement, and public health groups “off-campus” have resulted in significant change in curbing student off-campus drinking – see http://tinyurl.com/qsdz62.

In addition to such coalitions, campus officials that hold students responsible for their behavior off-campus and subject them to the same consequences as if the drinking was done on-campus often direct these students to participate in brief motivational screening – see http://tinyurl.com/lohw6p. Other strategies are being piloted to address these issues, but like a medication that accomplishes its primary objective but necessitating a second prescription to assuage side effects, environmental management strategies have contributed significantly to affecting collegiate drinking.
With the return of students and the adverse consequences of drinking done by some of their number, new and innovative strategies have been implemented by colleges and universities to act on rather than react to this perennial vestige of collegiate life. Although alcohol and its consumption will remain regular parts of contemporary campus life, these inventive strategies will likely result in changed student behavior.