Introduction
College is a new atmosphere, an environment that is filled with teenagers going through new transitions. Incoming students are ready to experiment and desperate to fit in, making this group dangerously eager to satisfy their ego. The perception of binge drinking among college students is skewed to an extreme that provides an excuse for consuming excessive amounts of alcohol. It is important to understand variables that may affect understanding and decisions that leads to abusing alcohol. It is intended to present factors that can help prevent circumstances and situations that put students’ health at risk. The purpose of this study is to assess the drinking habits of college students.
This proposal endeavors to present possible risk factors that may lead to college students binge drinking and examine the extent of the ensuing health and behavioral problems that are created. It’s not easy for college students to turn down an offer of a beer or two or three or four and it continues. According to Wechsler et al. (1994), incoming students are more susceptible to peer pressure, the vulnerability of independence makes this adolescent group more likely to over consume beer and wine.
With a strong enthusiasm to be accepted, vulnerable feelings coming from being away from home, and being too far for their parent’s rules comes uncomfortable questions, leaving students with some serious decisions to make. Pressures from new friends and being in new environments make it hard to distinguish between too much and not enough. Difficult questions with potentially damaging consequences turn into automatic responses when social pressures and the desire for acceptance become factors. College students at all levels are faced with difficul...
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...ng the issue and making the issue more visible on college campuses may result in college communities to increase awareness on how to prevent it.
References ajph.aphapublications.org Chaloupka, F. J. and Weschler, H. (1996), Binge drinking in college: The impact of price, availability, and alcohol control polices. Contemporary Economic Policy, 14, 112–124
Glatter, R. (2014) Update On Binge Drinking Among College Students: From Bad To Worse.forbes.com simplesample.org Wechsler, H., Dowdall, G.H., Davenport, A., Castillo, S. (1994). Health and Behavioral consequences of binge drinking in college. The Journal of American Medical Association, 1672-1677.
Weizman, E.R., nelson, T.F., Weschler, H. (2003) Taking up binge drinking in college; the influences of person, social group and environment”, Journal of Adolescent Health, 32(1) 26-35
www.cdc.gov
Getting Serious About Eradicating Binge Drinking is an informative article by Henry Wechsler. Wechsler has worked with the College Alcohol study since its creation in 1992, and he also lectures at the School of Public Health at Harvard. In his article, Weschler discusses the prominent trend of binge drinking on college campuses and how to solve the widespread problem. Binge drinking is a term used to describe the act drinking alcoholic beverages with the intention of becoming intoxicated over a short period of time.
Weshler, Henry, and Wuethrich, Bernice. Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on college campuses. Chicago: Rodale Inc., 2002. Print.
College student drunkenness is far from new and neither are college and university efforts to control it. What is new, however, is the potential to make real progress on this age-old problem based on scientific research results. New research-based information about the consequences of high-risk college drinking and how to reduce it can empower colleges and universities, communities, and other interested organizations to take effective action. Hazardous drinking among college students is a widespread problem that occurs on campuses of all sizes and geographic locations. A recent survey of college students conducted by the Harvard University School of Public Health reported that 44 percent of respondents had drunk more than five drinks (four for women) consecutively in the previous two weeks. About 23 percent had had three or more such episodes during that time. The causes of this problem are the fact that students are living by themselves no longer with parents or guardians; they earn their own money; students need to be a part of a group, be accepted; and they have the wrong idea that to feel drunk is “cool.”
Why do college students drink so much? This timeless fad has effected this generation in high percentages since the beginning of college education. Today in America it is estimated that approximately 29% of college students are regular alcohol abusers. Another recent study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism performed showed that college students suffered 1,400 deaths, 70,000 date rapes and assaults, and 500,000 injuries each year as a result of alcohol. (McDonald) Although binge drinking (5+ drinks in one sitting) is considered a normal part of the college experience many factors contribute to whether or not an individual is more prone to be an abuser.
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college environment, will damage themselves mentally, physically, and socially later in life, because alcohol adversely affects the brain, the liver, and the drinkers behavior.
We all know what it is like to wake up in the morning, with our head aching, and our body feeling like it was just hit by a train. College students world wide know this feeling. These are the results of binge drinking. The question of why college students continue to submit themselves to alcohol is unknown. While many reasons are given, the cause generally falls into one of three categories, peer pressure, insecurity, or to help solve there problems. But the one thing students don’t realize are the consequences and effects that binge drinking can have, health and social problems are just a few.
Binge Drinking is an intriguing phenomenon that many college students take part in all across the country. The issue of binge drinking has been a problem on college campuses for decades. Binge drinking has many horrible effects, but the problem starts with the causes for it. If the causes could be controlled then the issue would not get out of hand. Many college students give different causes for their drinking problems, and experts on the subject have their explanations as well. The problem is, while growing through adolescence anything can become an excuse for drinking, such as ¡§its Thursday the day before Friday, we need to drink¡¨ or, ¡§it¡¦s the last Wednesday of the semester, lets get some beer.¡¨
Student binge drinking has been receiving increasing attention in colleges in recent years. In “A Systematic Review of Interventions Aimed at Reducing Binge Drinking among College Students,” the author Bridge and Sharma state, “The consumption of alcohol results in many health and safety concerns that include personal, social, and economic consequences for individuals, their families, communities, and the nation” (26). College student’s high-risk drinking behavior can cause death, unintentional injuries, assaults, sexual assaults, inadequate academic performance, unprotected sex, and colleges are seeking to create programs and accessible intervention
In many of the colleges and universities today, there are a tremendous amount of students who Drink. The students who consume at least five drinks in a row at one point during a two week period are considered Binge Drinkers. Binge Drinking by college students is the cause to some of the students’ deaths, causes some students grades to fall, and is very dangerous and unhealthy.
Underage students drinking on college campuses has been a problem for countless years. Parents and professors look over the problem of students drinking and look at their college life in a positive way. They understand the students to be studying, making new friends, or working. Instead, an abundance of students are partying and drinking at these parties. The transformation from high school to college causes stress to the students. Therefore, instead of the students looking towards studying more, they start partying to solve their problems. Once they start partying, it gets harder for them to stop and they become depressed. Students drinking at college has become a provision for them, thinking it would help with their stress and problems rather than causing other predicaments.
According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA, 2013), four out of five college students drink alcohol. Alcohol consumption is not only the cause of 1,800 deaths, 599,000 injuries, 696,000 physical assaults, and 97,000 sexual assaults of 18-24 year olds but it can also be the link to disordered eating habits such as overeating, purging, or not eating at all (Giles, Champion, Sutfin, McCoy & Wagoner, 2009; NIAAA, 2013). Nearly 80% of college students report drinking alcohol and half have claimed binge drinking in the past two weeks (NIAAA, 2013). Binge drinking can give drinkers an increased chance of becoming vulnerable to 54 different types of injuries and diseases. It is possible for students who drink to eventually develop an alcohol-related health problem that can affect the liver, heart, and stomach (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012).
It has been stated in each research source that hazing and particularly binge drinking is the most serious problem affecting social life, academic life, and health on college campuses today. The journal article pertaining to this issue, How Harvard’s College Alcohol Study Can Help Your Campus Design a Campaign Against Student Alcohol Abuse (CAS: Campus Alcohol Study for short), focuses more heavily on binge drinking and prevention than it does on the Greek system itself. The authors, Wechsler, Nelson, and Weitzman, contend that binge drinking is a nationally recognized problem but has not been studied efficiently enough to warrant effective prevention plans. The purpose of this article is to share with the public the results of a survey representing 50,000 students in 140 colleges, in 39 states. This is the first nationally representative survey of its kind and the analysis of its outcome by the authors of this article has resulted in seemingly sound prevention ideas. To begin interpreting the binge drinking phenomenon, a solid understanding of the term must be presented. Binge drinking is defined by all the articles as consuming five or more drinks in rapid succession (four or more for women) at least once in a two week period. Shockingly, the College Alcohol Study (CAS) found that two out of every five college students binge drink. The authors of this article argue that binge drinking has negative effects not only on the drinkers, but also on the entire student body. The binge drinker might get alcohol poisoning, other related physical injuries, or weakened academic performance, while the non-binging students are subjected to insults, arguments, vandalism, physical and sexual assaults, and loss of sleep due to alcohol influenced peers. The next topic that the article gets into is the different areas that change need be made to lessen the presence of binge drinking and ways in which these changes might be made. The first idea presented is that simply educating students about alcohol abuse and related problems is not effective. The CAS shows that four out of five students have been exposed to anti-alcohol education and still two out of these five binge drink, let alone drink at all. In fact, Wechsler, Nelosn, and Weitzman state that most members of predominant binge drinking groups like athletes and Greek organizations openly admit to being educated in this area. These findings display how ineffective alcohol education on college campuses is.
Binge or excessive drinking is the most serious problem affecting social life, health, and education on college campuses today. Binge or excessive drinking by college students has become a social phenomena in which college students do not acknowledge the health risks that are involved with their excessive drinking habits. Furthermore college students do not know enough about alcohol in general and what exactly it does to the body or they do not pay attention to the information given to them. There needs to be a complete saturation on the campus and surrounding areas, including businesses and the media, expressing how excessive drinking is not attractive and not socially accepted.
According to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, more than 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related causes every year, while about 800,000 are being assaulted by other students because of drinking. About one in every four college students who binge drink also admit that they have experienced academic problems. Binge drinking is drinking multiple drinks in just a few hours to get drunk. Despite the fact that college drinking has caused many issues, it has not been stopped, yet. In article, “Why Colleges Haven’t Stopped Binge Drinking,” McMurtrie (2014) explains that this issue has not been resolved yet because many people still see alcohol abuse as general issue instead of seeing it an individual behavior. Because colleges
In 2008, over 80% of United StateS college students have had at least one alcoholic drink in a span of over two weeks (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009). 40% of these college students binge drink, having four or more drinks. This exceeds the rate of other non-college peers. Research suggests