On May 2, Northwestern officials announced the University’s plans to join an anti-binge drinking collaborative effort spearheaded by Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim.
The alliance, called the Learning Collaborative on High-Risk Drinking, currently comprises 14 universities and was formed with an objective “to reduce harm and decrease the amount of binge drinking that (happens) on campus,” according to Dartmouth’s director of media relations, Justin Anderson.
Anderson said because of Kim’s background as a medical doctor, the status of students’ health has “kept him up at night” during his 18 months of presidency.
“Forty percent of college students engage in binge drinking,” Anderson said. “(Kim) looked at this problem as a public health problem, which is not always how it’s looked at.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “binge drinking” is “a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 grams percent or above.” The CDC website says for men this usually occurs after five drinks, and for women after four drinks, in a two-hour period.
Kim has previously applied a similarly-styled “learning collaborative” while treating drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru, Anderson said, which made “tremendous strides.” The collaborative will use a similar method in an attempt to eradicate binge drinking on college campuses.
The program will consist of biannual “learning sessions,” the first of which is planned for the end of June, to discuss universities’ implementation of different plans and ways to measure how successful they have been. Three to five representatives from each university will meet to show their investment in the program, Anderson said.
Additionally, each month representatives will come together for what Anderson said “amounts to a giant conference call” to “check in” on how their programs are going.
While all the universities will communicate about their individual plans, the Collaborative will not dictate exactly which steps they should take to reduce drinking on their campuses, Anderson said.
“When we use the term ‘Collaborative,’ that’s not a term we use lightly,” Anderson said. “It’s about fitting potential solutions to your own context. What works in Hanover, N.H., may very well fail at Northwestern.”
The Collaborative contacted 66 different universities about becoming involved in the program, Anderson said, with a goal of geographic and demographic diversity.
Anderson stressed that the program is “not exclusive,” and that schools may apply to join until May 20.
Northwestern spokesman Al Cubbage said he appreciates the program’s emphasis on measurement and keeping track of whether implemented anti-binge drinking programs are working.
“I think the University wanted to be part of this effort because it is obviously a very serious problem,” Cubbage said of excessive alcohol consumption. “It’s a problem Northwestern has tried to address and tries to address in a variety of ways.”
Jeffrey Sunshine and Dr. Suzanne Fields, whose son Matthew died of alcohol poisoning in 2008 while a freshman at NU, said they heard about the program in its early stages. Fields, an internist, gave some input.
“I talked to (Kim) more about what happened to Matthew and what I thought needed to be done, but I’d rather not take the credit for this,” Fields said. “This was his idea.”
Sunshine said the program “is a big deal” and “reflects the first item in our settlement.”
This settlement, which granted $2 million to the Sunshine family, was reached in September 2010. As previously reported in The Daily, it did not constitute any admission of wrongdoing and also included 10 non-financial terms, including a request that NU renew its commitment to existing campus alcohol rules and review its policy regarding students who call for medical help in alcohol emergencies.
Sunshine said in order for binge drinking to decrease at NU or any university, students’ values must change.
“People have to realize it’s not funny to get someone drunk. It’s not funny to send someone to the hospital,” Sunshine said. “People aren’t binge drinking in their rooms alone.”
In addition to being involved with the Collaborative,
Sunshine said he would like to see NU administrators “come out and say these types of things are not acceptable.”
He also said reducing alcohol consumption on college campuses is important because of its frequent ties to assault and sexual abuse.
“What happened to Matthew is pretty rare,” he said, “but rapes and physical sexual abuses aren’t.”
Fields said in her experience speaking with college students about these issues, almost every one of them has had a personal experience with a friend or roommate who has experienced dangerous effects of alcohol consumption.
“Students have to be aware of the dangers of excessive drinking and what can happen,” she said. “It can’t be part of the ‘work hard, play hard’ culture, in that ‘play hard’ means getting toxically drunk because it’s medically and physically dangerous.”
She said NU’s participation in the collaborative is a positive step.
“This is a very encouraging development from our perspective,” she said.
