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S. Hrg. 107–553

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: THE BINGE DRINKING

EPIDEMIC ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 15, 2002

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Staff Director and Counsel

KIERSTEN TODT COON, Professional Staff Member

RICHARD A. HERTLING, Minority Staff Director

W. BAXTER LEE, Legislative Aide to the Minority

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statements: Page

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 34

Prepared statement:

Senator Bunning ............................................................................................... 39

WITNESSES

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2002

Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D., Acting Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department

of Health and Human Services ........................................................................... 3

Ralph W. Hingson, Sc.D., M.P.H., Professor and Associate Dean for Research,

Boston University School of Public Health ........................................................ 5

Mark S. Goldman, Ph.D., Director, Alcohol and Substance Abuse Research

Institute, University of South Florida ................................................................ 7

Daniel P. Reardon, D.D.S., Parent ......................................................................... 18

John D. Welty, Ed.D., President, California State University, Fresno ............... 20

Robert F. Nolan, Chief of Police, Town of Hamden, Connecticut ........................ 22

Drew Hunter, Executive Director, The BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer Education Network ..................................................................................................... 25

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Goldman, Mark S., Ph.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7

Prepared statement with an attachment ....................................................... 49

Hingson, Ralph W., Sc.D., M.P.H.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44

Hunter, Drew:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 25

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 81

Kington, Raynard S., M.D., Ph.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40

Nolan, Chief Robert F.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 77

Reardon, Daniel P., D.D.S.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 18

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 56

Welty, John D., Ed.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 20

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 58

APPENDIX

Chart entitled ‘‘Task Force Materials’’ submitted by Dr. Kington ...................... 85

Chart entitled ‘‘College Students U.S.’’ submitted by Dr. Hingson ..................... 86

C.D. Mote, Jr., President, University of Maryland, prepared statement with

attachments .......................................................................................................... 87

Catherine Bath, Program Director, Security On Campus, Inc., prepared statement ...................................................................................................................... 99

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UNDER THE INFLUENCE: THE BINGE DRINKING EPIDEMIC ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2002

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Lieberman and Carper.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

Chairman LIEBERMAN. The hearing will come to order. Good

morning. Thanks to all of you for being here.

Today we are here to talk about a very serious public health

problem and our message is a simple but serious one, which is that

alcohol abuse on college campuses has reached a point where it is

far more destructive than most people realize and today it threatens too many of our young people. College students need to know

that if they party to excess, they could die, and college administrators need to know that intervention is the only way to get this outof-control behavior under control.

I came to this concern, which led to this hearing today, from simply observing, listening, and watching what was happening in my

home State of Connecticut. Within the last 12 months, six college

students have died in alcohol-related incidents. Eighty-five alcoholrelated arrests were made during the University of Connecticut’s

spring weekend this year, and last week, Trinity College suspended

one of its oldest fraternities.

The numbers here are alarming. The rate of death and injury is

extremely alarming, especially given Connecticut’s relatively small

size, but I have come to understand that this is not an anomaly.

It is not unusual. Connecticut is, sadly, just a part of a nationwide

trend among college students to get as drunk as possible as quickly

as possible, often with devastating effects.

Obviously, I know that many people consider drinking to be just

another rite of passage for many college students and I can even

remember my own college days and such behavior. But drinking is

not the issue here. What we are concerned about is drinking in excess, binge drinking, drinking one’s self to death. This type of behavior is not a harmless initiation into adulthood and is not a

sport. It is reckless behavior, toxic conduct that can cut young lives

short.

2

We are fortunate to have with us today the Acting Director of the

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which has recently published a powerful study illustrating the seriousness of

the problem of heavy episodic drinking on American college campuses. The study found that while the proportion of non-drinking

students has actually risen, so too have extreme forms of drinking.

The upshot is that drinking by college students between the ages

of 18 and 24 contributes to 1,400 deaths a year, 70,000 cases of

sexual assault or rape, and 500,000 injuries.

Let me repeat those numbers because they are, to me, stunning.

Each year, college drinking contributes to 1,400 deaths, almost half

the number of lives lost in the terrorist attacks against us on September 11, 70,000 sexual assaults or rapes, and 500,000 injuries.

Additionally, the Surgeon General has identified binge drinking

among college students as a major public health problem. About 40

percent of students apparently binge drink, according to one study,

and that is defined as five or more drinks in a row for men and

four or more drinks for women. One recent survey found that 20

percent of students reported binging more than three times over a

2-week period.

Most binge drinkers are freshmen. Most are men. Most attend

schools where fraternities, sororities, or athletics dominate campus

life, and curiously, and to me interestingly, the National Institute

also found that most binge drinking occurs in the Northeast. That

is, more of it occurs proportionately in the Northeast than any

other section of the country.

Clearly, the culture of high-risk drinking is a problem that touches not just a few students and their families or a few campuses but

entire communities, and in that sense, the Nation.

Edward Malloy, the President of the University of Notre Dame,

Father Malloy, who co-chairs the National Institute on Alcohol

Abuse and Alcoholism Task Force on College Drinking, has said

that even though ‘‘a minority of college students engage in highrisk drinking, all students and their parents, faculty, and members

of the surrounding community suffer the negative consequences of

alcohol abuse, and that includes assault, vandalism, and traffic accidents.’’

So our obvious question is, what is being done about this? In my

opinion, based on what I have learned to date, not enough is being

done. Some colleges are actively working to revise their alcohol

policies. Others are struggling with policy changes. But, frankly,

from what I can see thus far, too many more are denying that a

problem even exists.

I paid a very encouraging visit to the University of Connecticut

campus in Storrs on Monday, where I heard of an aggressive new

program that is directed at this problem. And, there are some other

colleges that are implementing similar programs as well. For example, the California State University system is a model of intervention. After the alcohol overdose of a freshman fraternity pledge, the

California State system adopted a comprehensive set of policies to

reduce alcohol abuse among students, which includes educational

programs, training, intervention, and treatment. The California

State University system, I think, should be commended for underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:37 Dec 02, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80600.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
3

1The prepared statement of Dr. Kington appears in the Appendix on page 40.

standing that to sit on the sidelines is to await the worst, including

the death of more students.

More colleges and universities need to be implementing tougher

alcohol policies and working with communities and local law enforcement to enforce minimum drinking age laws, to increase enforcement at campus events where excessive drinking is promoted,

and to inform incoming students and their parents about alcohol

policies and penalties.

I do not know, as we begin this hearing, whether there is any

appropriate legislative response from Congress or State legislatures

to this public health problem. In the first instance, we are holding

this hearing to educate the Committee, but also in that sense to

educate the public and, hopefully, to engender action and reaction

from students, from parents, from faculty, and from college and

university administrators that will save lives.

As the research shows, excessive alcohol consumption threatens

the health and safety of students and disturbs and threatens the

lives of those who live in communities surrounding the campuses.

So we have got to redouble our efforts to bring this kind of alcohol

consumption under control, to provide students with the tools to

make more informed decisions so that we save the lives of as many

students as possible.

We have two panels of witnesses today. The first are people who

have done research and work in the field and we are delighted that

they are with us. Dr. Mark Goldman is the Director of the Alcohol

and Substance Abuse Research Institute at the University of South

Florida. Dr. Ralph Hingson is professor and Associate Dean of Research at the Boston University School of Public Health. Dr.

Raynard Kington is the Acting Director of the National Institute on

Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Kington, I would like to begin with you. We have your and

all the other witnesses’ prepared statements, for which we thank

you. They are very well done and very helpful. We will enter them

fully in the record and I ask that you proceed for approximately 5

minutes. We have a light system here which will let you know

when you have a minute to go. If you have a little more than a

minute, do not fear that we will close the mike because we want

to hear you out. Anyway, thank you for being here and good morning. We welcome your testimony now.

TESTIMONY OF RAYNARD S. KINGTON, M.D., PH.D.,1 ACTING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND

ALCOHOLISM, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Dr. KINGTON. Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chairman. My

name is Raynard Kington. I am Acting Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, also known as NIAAA, of

the National Institutes of Health. Thank you for inviting me here

to discuss an extremely important public health issue, excessive

and high-risk drinking among students at our Nation’s colleges and

universities.

4

Last month, NIAAA’s Task Force on College Drinking released

some important new data. You may have seen the troubling statistics detailing dangerous drinking behavior by college students and

its consequences both for drinkers and those who do not drink but

must suffer the results of others drinking. We see the harm caused

by excessive drinking by college students; it is profound. As you

noted, the deaths, the injuries, assaults, and sexual assaults are

very troubling.

The scientific evidence of the size of the problem is only reinforced by the regular press coverage of deaths on college campuses

throughout the country. For example, the news stories in the past

several months have reported on tragic deaths of students at

Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and the University of Maryland, in particular. These deaths highlight the consequences of college drinking for families and for colleges and universities and for

the peers and friends of these students.

What did not receive as much attention in the press coverage of

the report is what can be done by communities, college presidents,

parents, students, and others. The task force did not want to identify another major health problem without focusing on ways of addressing the problem.

The task force, as you noted, chaired by Dr. Goldman and the

University of Notre Dame President Father Edward Malloy, was

formed in 1998 by the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse

and Alcoholism amid growing concern about college drinking and

the need to fill the gaps in our knowledge base regarding effective

interventions. The task force was charged with examining all scientific data, commissioning studies to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and recommending research-based solutions.

The report moves beyond the sheer number of college students

engaged in high-risk drinking and focuses on the tremendous overall societal burden created by the problem. We also provide tools

to help college presidents address the problem.

The task force was unique in many ways. It was the first project

of this breadth and depth to bring together college presidents, researchers, and college and high school students. It is the first NIH

report on college drinking, producing 24 commissioned papers on

all aspects of this issue. In addition to the lead publication by Dr.

Hingson, who is with us today, in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 18 of those papers were published in a special supplement to

that journal.

It is the first report to offer research-based recommendations to

college presidents. The task force also produced a variety of products noted on the board that reach out to and address the needs

and interests of a wide range of audiences, including college presidents, researchers, parents, college students, and peer educators.

We launched a new website, www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov,

which includes full-text versions of all the products plus other useful information. Since April 9, when the report was released, the

site has logged over 1.2 million hits, another measure of public interest.

Finally, the task force sets forth a comprehensive research agenda to ensure that future interventions are also based on scientific

evidence. We are currently spending approximately $7 million to

5

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Task Force Materials’’ appears in the Appendix on page 85. 2The prepared statement of Dr. Hingson appears in the Appendix on page 44.

study these issues with an additional $8 million proposed over the

next 2 fiscal years.

As we discuss the problem, we need to be very clear about one

thing. While many college students do not misuse alcohol and

many do not drink at all, a culture of high-risk drinking prevails

on many campuses. Some have suggested that drinking has always

been a part of the college tradition and always will be, but highrisk drinking and its often tragic consequences are preventable. We

refuse to accept a single alcohol-related death, a single assault, a

single case of date rape as inevitable.

As a result of the task force, we now know not only how injurious

college drinking is to our sons and daughters, but also that there

are steps that we can take on our campuses and in our communities to address the problem today, even as we continue to learn

more about the problem and its solution.

Is our work done? Absolutely not. We are planning to conduct regional workshops around the country. One of the task force presidents, Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce of the University of Puget Sound,

will host the first of these regional workshops next fall. Dr. Robert

Carothers, President of the University of Rhode Island, has been

invited to host a regional meeting for the New England States. We

have produced additional brochures and other information for different audiences, such as high school guidance counselors and community groups.1

We will expand research collaborations with universities, such as

a project we are funding that you noted with 16 campuses in the

California State system, jointly funded by the Substance Abuse and

Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA. We will also

seek to increase our coordination with other Federal agencies, including the Department of Education, SAMHSA, and other entities,

such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This is just the beginning of what promises to be a long-term effort. Changing the culture does not come quickly or easily. We urge

all college and university presidents to apply the recommendations

of the report. NIAAA is sending the report and all related materials to every college and university in the country. We challenge

society to no longer ignore the consequences of drinking on our Nation’s campuses. Thank you again for inviting me.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Doctor. That was an excellent

beginning. Now, Dr. Hingson.

TESTIMONY OF RALPH W. HINGSON, Sc.D., M.P.H.,2 PROFESSOR

AND ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH, BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Dr. HINGSON. Thank you. I am Dr. Ralph Hingson. I am the Associate Dean for Research at the Boston University School of Public

Health.

What I would like to do this morning is first review some of the

methods used in a paper commissioned by the task force to look at

the magnitude of alcohol-related mortality and morbidity among

college students ages 18 to 24 and then offer some suggestions

6

1 Chart entitled ‘‘College Students U.S.’’ appears in the Appendix on page 86.

based on the review that we did of the scientific literature about

what types of intervention can work to address the problem. Certainly, there is no silver bullet and there is a lot that we need to

learn above and beyond what we have already seen, but the good

news is that there is a lot that we can do with what we know already.

First of all, to derive the estimates of the magnitude of the problem, we tried to integrate across multiple data sets. We looked at

the U.S. Department of Transportation Fatality Analysis Reporting

System, which looks at motor vehicle alcohol-related crash deaths,

the Centers for Disease Control mortality files, the U.S. Department of Education college enrollment data, U.S. Census Bureau

data on the number of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States, a

review published in 1999 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, authored by Gordon Smith et al., looking at alcohol involvement in injury deaths.1 This was a review over a 20-year period of over 300

medical examiner studies published in the United States in the scientific literature.

We also looked at three national surveys, the Centers for Disease

Control College Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted in 1995, the

1999 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Survey, and

the 1999 National Household Survey of Drug Abuse. That survey

was particularly helpful because it looked at over 19,000 respondents ages 18 to 24, of whom nearly 7,000 were college students. So

we were able to compare 18- to 24-year-olds in college with those

not in college.

You have already mentioned some of the results. We estimate

1,400 alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths each year. The

bulk of those, 1,100, are traffic deaths. In addition, we projected

based on the surveys and given the population of college students

that 2.1 million college students every year drive under the influence of alcohol, 500,000 are injured because of drinking, 400,000

have unprotected sex.

I think a particularly startling statistic was that over 600,000

college students are assaulted each year by another drinking college student. I live in the city of Boston. The population there is

about 600,000. That is equivalent to the city of Boston in a given

year being assaulted by a drinking college student. And as you

mentioned, 70,000 were the victim of a sexual assault or date rape

by another drinking college student.

These numbers are, frankly, higher than I anticipated that they

would be when we began our research and lead me to two immediate conclusions.

First, I think we need to improve our data systems in monitoring

this. I believe that we need to test, and this is a legislative recommendation, I think we need to test every unnatural death in the

United States for alcohol. We do a pretty good job of testing fatally

injured drivers in traffic crashes and that has permitted us to assess whether or not legal interventions and programs to reduce

drinking and driving have had an impact on reducing alcohol-related traffic deaths. We need to do this for all unnatural deaths,

for homicides, suicides, falls, drownings, burns, and so on so that

7

1The prepared statement of Dr. Goldman with an attachment appears in the Appendix on

page 49.

we can get a yardstick against which to measure whether or not

our programs make any difference.

Second, as you mentioned, we need to enforce our age 21 law.

That is the legal drinking age in every State in the Nation. We

know that when that law is enforced, that it reduces alcohol-related injuries and fatalities.

Because most of the alcohol-related deaths among college students are traffic deaths, we do have a series of recommendations

based on research that can reduce alcohol-related traffic deaths.

Administrative license revocation laws, we have those in 40 States.

Lowering the legal limit to 0.08, the Senate has already passed legislation that will fine States if they do not do that. Thirty-two

States have that law. Mandatory screening and treatment for people who are convicted of driving while intoxicated, the law in 23

States. Primary enforcement of safety belt laws, we have that only

in 18 States. That law, if every State adopted it, probably prevent

600 alcohol-related traffic deaths a year and another 1,000 non-alcohol-related traffic deaths. And then, finally, the use of sobriety

checkpoints is a proven method to reduce these problems.

Finally, we need to have colleges and their surrounding communities form partnerships and work together to address this problem. The colleges cannot do it alone. If they crack down and the

communities, surrounding communities are not on board, it will

just drive the problem out in the community. Conversely, if the

communities crack down and the colleges are lax, it will just drive

the problem back onto campus. We need the two of them to work

together and to involve students.

I think that unless students are involved in this process, many

of them will think that greater restrictions are authoritarian and

paternalistic. What most people do not know is that a majority of

college students want stricter enforcement and stricter regulation

around alcohol issues. After all, many of them are being affected

by other student’s drinking and behavior after drinking.

So I think that we do have a number of tools available to us to

reduce this problem and if we implement those laws and those regulations and enforce them, we will not only reduce the harm that

college drinking students cause themselves, but the harm that they

cause other college students and members of the community, as

well.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Doctor, for very helpful testimony, also. Dr. Goldman, good morning.

TESTIMONY OF MARK S. GOLDMAN, Ph.D.,1 DIRECTOR, ALCOHOL AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Dr. GOLDMAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

inviting me here today. My name is Mark Goldman and I am Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at the University of

South Florida in Tampa, Florida. I was co-chair of the Task Force

on College Drinking.

8

Clearly, we have reached a stage at which serious national conversation has begun, and I applaud this Committee for taking the

lead in this effort with today’s hearing. Because Dr. Kington has

summarized the task force’s goals and Dr. Hingson has reviewed

the consequences of college drinking, I will first make a few overarching points that link our task force report to the needs of American society. Then I will briefly summarize the task force’s conclusions and recommendations.

In my role as task force co-chair, I had the opportunity to meet

some of the parents tragically affected by the events reported by

Dr. Hingson, and because I have children of my own in this age

range, I resonate to their stories. But these individual stories and

statistics, alarming as they are, combine into an even bigger story.

Simply put, this is an enormous public health problem in America

today, a problem that has remained stubbornly consistent for decades.

Alcohol is tightly interwoven into the social fabric of college life,

bringing with it enormous social, economic, and personal consequences for our children, consequences, we are learning, that are

probably more extensive than any of us imagined. I cannot emphasize enough that it is a culture, our culture, which we face. At best,

this culture seizes some of our best and brightest, robbing them of

their academic potential, and it affects virtually all members of the

college community, including non-drinking students who are often

victimized. At worst, this culture takes lives right then and there.

These circumstances cannot be dismissed, therefore, as simply a

rite of passage or an inevitable part of college life.

For policy makers and legislators, however, there is an equally

important, although much less obvious, point to remember. Despite

the certainty with which many researchers present their findings,

much work remains to be done. Certainly, there is an abundance

of small scale, university-specific studies and there is ample anecdotal evidence and case studies which document the kind of apparently isolated events commonly used by the media to bring this

issue to the public attention.

But in almost all areas of college drinking, from how widespread

the problem is to the factors that place individuals at most risk for

the problems, to what types of interventions work best, there is a

paucity of research that adheres to the level of methodological rigor

that is essential if research is to be truly informative for decision

makers. Encouraging college presidents, policy makers, and researchers themselves to demand this standard of scientific rigor is

one of the critical aspects of our task force report.

Rigorous scientific research has the potential to break the terrible cycle we see repeated time and again, a tragic death followed

by a large amount of money thrown at the problem with little or

no evaluation. Few of these efforts achieve any lasting results. Administrators become frustrated, policy makers cynical, students apathetic, and college drinking continues as an apparently intractable

problem.

Now, as to specific recommendations, two are offered for presidents and their staffs. First, the task force recommends an overarching framework for organizing alcohol prevention and intervention programs. The purpose of this organization, which is called the

9

three-in-one framework, is to create a comprehensive program that

focuses simultaneously on multiple levels—individuals, the student

population as a whole, and the surrounding community—and each

of these approaches must be used in concert. Problems are likely

to arise in any domain not included in the plan. To achieve this

concerted approach, representatives from each of these components

must be part of the planning process, including the alcohol and

hospitality industries.

Second, the task force recommends specific strategies tailored to

the unique needs and characteristics of each school that may be

used within each of these levels. No two schools are alike. The recommended strategies are divided into four tiers, effective with college audiences, effective with general populations but not yet tested, promising, and ineffective. Planners must choose from the first

three alternatives and then evaluate outcomes. We would never

allow a medication to be commercially used without testing, but

that practice is regularly followed in connection with college drinking programs.

For the research community and NIAAA in particular, the task

force identified a variety of knowledge gaps that offer new research

opportunities and it called for communication of results as broadly

as possible. And, it emphasized the bridging of the gap that all too

often exists between researchers and policy makers.

I believe these steps, taken together, will move our field and our

Nation forward in coming to grips with a pervasive public health

problem.

The path we need to follow is relatively clear, but it is not easy

or inexpensive. We need the public will and leadership of legislators to provide the resources needed to continue this important

work, and we need to acknowledge the disparity between the size

of the problem and the resources currently devoted to the organizations designed to address it. As an NIH institute, NIAAA is perfectly situated to lead the effort to cope with this huge societal

problem. Thank you again.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Dr. Goldman.

Thanks to all of you. Dr. Goldman made a statement about the

problem existing for a long time, and I think all of us know that

from our own experience. Is there any data to suggest that the

problem of so-called binge drinking has become more serious in recent years on college and university campuses? Dr. Hingson.

Dr. HINGSON. There is some survey data, the College Alcohol

Survey that Dr. Henry Wechsler conducts at the Harvard School of

Public Health. It is a national survey that he has been conducting

periodically since 1993. The evidence is that there has been a slight

increase in this, what you call binge drinking, five or more drinks

on an occasion in the past couple of weeks for a man or four or

more for a woman. This has increased.

What is interesting is that during the same time period among

people under the age of 21, among high school students, for example, there have been declines in consumption and there have been

declines in this type of drinking among persons the same age not

in non-college. So it is particularly an issue on the college campuses.

10

But I think it is important to point out that a lot of the problems

arise—the drinking problems begin even before young people start

to college. There is a whole line of research that indicates that the

younger people are when they begin to drink, the more likely they

are to develop alcohol dependence, the more likely they are to drink

frequently to intoxication, to experience unintentional injuries,

motor vehicle crashes because of drinking, get in physical fights because of drinking, have unprotected sex after drinking. This is a

problem that is bubbling up into the college campuses and that is

why it is so important that we need to work with the communities

in which the college students reside.

Also, even though a smaller percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who

are not in college are not driving after drinking as those in college

or engaging in binge drinking as frequently, there are so many

more 18- to 24-year-olds not in college than in college that overall

a larger number engage in those behaviors that they account for

even more fatalities and injuries than we talked about in the report

on college student drinking. So this is a problem that the entire society needs to address.

Unintentional injuries in the United States are the leading cause

of death for people ages one to 34. Thirty-eight percent of those injuries are alcohol-related. So what are we talking about here? We

are talking about the leading contributor to the leading cause of

death of young people in the United States. That is something that

not only college campuses, but our entire society needs to try to address.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Well said. Any other thoughts about the

relative seriousness of the problem? Dr. Goldman.

Dr. GOLDMAN. Yes. I would like to say that we have to keep in

mind, again, that this is a culture, and part of the culture is that

we have not paid attention to this. It has seemed something acceptable. It seemed something ordinary. In many ways, our whole society has been working for many years to avoid looking at it and I

think this problem may have been with us, perhaps not in the

same degree that it is now, but it may have been with us for a long

time and we look away, we cover it up, we avoid tackling this problem because it seems so everyday and something that is accepted.

I think the point that needs to be made—and this hearing is a

perfect starting point—is that the attention has to be placed on

this behavior in a way that suggests that it is not something that

should remain as part of our culture but rather something that we

need to change.

Even an institute like NIAAA, people think of as dealing with serious alcoholism. Well, in fact, the problem is much larger. The

public health problem, the problem of alcohol pervades many aspects of our society, from children even through adolescence

through college, and in ways that are not the characteristic alcoholic that people think of. We need to tackle this problem in this

broad way and stop thinking of it as something ordinary.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I want to come back in a little bit to the

comments you made about alcoholism, but you have used the word

‘‘culture’’ several times. What do you mean by that? Do you mean

our culture in the normal sense in which culture is used is sending

messages to young people about the acceptability of drinking or do

11

you mean that there is sort of a sociological ethic within the college

campus community that creates its own incentives or lack of deterrents to indulge in such behavior?

Dr. GOLDMAN. Well, let me put it this way. I have heard from

a number of college presidents that when their schools, much to

their chagrin, made it onto a national listing of top party schools,

they thought that their enrollment would go down, and in fact,

quite the contrary happened. Their enrollment went up. The applications went up.

What happens is already in high school and before, kids are

taught that one of the things that is going to happen when you get

to college is you are going to get a chance to party and you are

going to get a chance to have a really good time involving alcohol.

They see their choice of college as actually being based, in part, on

the opportunity to do that kind of thing. Then when they get to college, there are various factors within the college environment, of

course, that sustain and perpetuate that kind of idea, and quite

frankly, I think it even carries on into adulthood when people report to their kids what they remember about their own college lives

and the fun that they had involving alcohol.

So it just seems like this is the thing to do. This is what you do.

You go to college, you study, and you party and drink, and all that

goes together.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is interesting and, in some ways,

surprising testimony. Part of what I had suspected and heard from

a few people was that some college and university administrators

do not focus on this problem because they do not want to highlight

it for fear that it would actually reduce enrollments. It is a perverse notion that it might actually increase enrollments.

Dr. Kington, did you want to add anything?

Dr. KINGTON. Just that when trying to develop interventions to

address this problem, it is extraordinarily important to recognize

that there is a wide variation in cultures across college campuses.

We have over 3,600 colleges and universities.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. In other words, individual campuses have

their own cultures.

Dr. KINGTON. Absolutely, and interventions have to be targeted

to the specific circumstances on individual college campuses. That

is why we have to have an array of tools that we can offer college

presidents and communities to address their specific problems.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I want to come back to this question of alcoholism because I have been focusing in my own mind on the

problem of binge drinking, which I understand to be something different from alcoholism in the sense of a dependency on alcohol.

Binge drinking, as I understand, is an act of momentary or temporary irresponsibility. I suppose it can lead to a dependency, but

am I right? Is that what we are talking about here—something different from alcoholism as we have come to know it?

Dr. KINGTON. Yes. Alcohol dependency, the disease, is different

from what is often described as binge drinking. I think the point

that was being made is that you have to look at this problem of

binge drinking within a broader context of the societal problem of

alcohol. But you are right, they are different things.

12

Dr. GOLDMAN. Although, if I may point out, that using the technical criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, a number of college students could

have the diagnosis of alcohol dependence applied to them during

their college years, based on their pattern of drinking.

Dr. KINGTON. But binging, per se, does not equal alcoholism.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It does not equal alcoholism. On the other

hand, and correct me again, the number that jumps out of those

statistics—which is the 1,400 deaths a year, and the other numbers, too, half-a-million injuries and 70,000 sexual assaults—presumably, those are not all the result of binge drinking. How do we

divide the problem or is the data capable of doing that?

Dr. HINGSON. I think you have raised a very good point. I mean,

what are we talking about with binge drinking? Five drinks in an

hour, or five drinks for a male. If I had five drinks in an hour on

an empty stomach, I would reach a blood alcohol level of about

0.10. That would be legal intoxication in every State in the Nation.

So they are drinking to the point of impairment, and then, unfortunately, lack of judgment sets in and people engage in behaviors

that pose risk not only to themselves, but to others.

So we are talking about a pattern of drinking that not only is

dangerous in and of itself, but contributes to other behaviors that

pose risk for the drinkers and for people other than the drinkers,

the people who may be assaulted, or 40 percent of alcohol-related

traffic deaths are people other than the drinking drivers. So there

are a lot of innocent victims here and what I think we need to do

is to mobilize the communities who are being adversely affected by

these behaviors who may not necessarily be the heavy drinkers

themselves but who are being impacted by the behavior, irresponsible behavior of these people after drinking to that level.

Dr. KINGTON. It is also important to note that this is not just a

problem of binge drinking.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a good point.

Dr. KINGTON. Those who drink less than that cutoff are often

still impaired and can be the source of major problems, as well.

You cannot just pin this on the binge drinkers.

Dr. HINGSON. About 20 percent of alcohol-related traffic deaths

involve people with blood alcohol levels below 0.10, which five

drinks would get you to that level.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So binge drinking is a unique problem,

but the overall problem we are discussing is part of a larger societal problem of substance abuse, in this case, of alcoholism.

I want to make sure I understand something that you said earlier, Dr. Hingson, and was I hearing you correctly, which is that

the problem of alcohol-related deaths and injuries is greater statistically among college students in that age bracket than non-college

students?

Dr. HINGSON. When we looked at the National Household Survey

on Drug Abuse, 42 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old college students

reported engaging in this binge drinking behavior compared to 38

percent of the non-college. Twenty-seven percent of the 18- to 24-

year-old college students said they drove under the influence of alcohol in the past year, compared to 20 percent of non-college. So

13

the college students are more apt to engage in this heavy drinking

and risky behavior after—— Chairman LIEBERMAN. The percentage differences are not enormous, but they are real. How would you explain them? My reaction

would be that students at college are away from home, so that they

may take liberties that they would—— Dr. HINGSON. They do not have jobs to go to.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. They do not have jobs to go to the next

morning, right.

Dr. HINGSON. They do not have the same responsibilities, and I

think that, unfortunately, many college campuses have been permissive and have been lax in enforcing the legal drinking age, for

example, of 21. Many college administrators feel that is a burden.

What they do not recognize is that law saves lives.

CDC recently reviewed 49 scientific studies on this. They found

that when the drinking ages were lowered back in the 1970’s, there

was a 10 percent increase in alcohol-related crashes. When the

drinking ages were then increased, there was a 16 percent decline

in alcohol-related crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration estimates that every year, 700 to 1,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths are prevented as a result of having a legal

drinking age of 21.

I think actually that is a conservative estimate because it does

not take into account other problems that are associated with underage drinking, the falls, the drownings, the burns, the homicides,

the suicides, the unprotected sex, illicit drug use, poor academic

performance, and so on.

And in addition, we have a recent body of research that is emerging that indicates that the younger people are when they start to

drink, the more likely they are to have dependence, to have unintentional injuries under the influence, motor vehicle crashes after

drinking, get in physical fights after drinking, not only when they

are adolescents, but it carries over into adult life.

So for all of these reasons, efforts to delay or prevent underage

drinking or delay the age of onset of drinking will have life-saving

benefits to our society.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. We will ask this question on the next

panel, but one of the things that the University of Connecticut has

done in response, and they lost two students this school year to an

alcohol-related incident, is to increase the on-campus penalties for

involvement with alcohol, and we may hear more about that as we

go on.

Beyond law enforcement, either on campus or in society generally, I want to ask you now to speak in a little more detail about

what we know about what kinds of programs work—education,

intervention, etc. Presumably, this is a classic case where you

would want a light to go on in a student’s head before they got into

binge drinking, or in the head of a friend who would stop them before they went to excess. So what do the studies show?

Dr. HINGSON. I think that there are a number of experimental

studies, and I will encourage Dr. Goldman to comment on this because he has done some of them, that indicate that individual counseling approaches with high-risk college students can reduce their

drinking and subsequent problems.

14

An illustration. Particularly in emergency department, trauma

center settings, when people have been brought in and alcohol contributed to the problem that led them there to begin with, there

was a study done by Dr. Larry Gontilillo at the Harbor View Trauma Center, where they tested for alcohol all of the people who

came to that trauma center. So these are people who had to be put

on life support to stay alive. They found that 46 percent had been

injured under the influence of alcohol.

They then did a randomized trial, an experimental study, where

they allocated half of them to receive a 30-minute brief intervention where they were told how their drinking compared to people

of the same age and gender nationwide, what their increased risk

of injury and medical problem was if they continued to drink at

that level, and then they were told where they could get help.

They followed them up a year later. Those in the intervention

group were averaging three drinks less per day. Over a 3-year period, compared to the control group there was a 23 percent reduction in driving under the influence arrests, a 47 percent reduction

in emergency department injury admissions, and a 48 percent reduction in trauma center injury admissions. Those are remarkable

reductions.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is very impressive.

Dr. HINGSON. What happened? They caught these people at a

teachable moment. They had just been injured so severely under

the influence that they needed to be put on life support to stay

alive.

A similar study has been done by Peter Monte at Rhode Island

Hospital in a pediatric emergency department where the average

age was 18 and he found similar results. There are at least eight

or nine experimental studies with college students that show if you

can identify high-risk college students and offer these types of brief

interventions to them, it will reduce their drinking and subsequent

problem.

The issue is, unfortunately, that many college students do not

think they have drinking problems and they are not getting recruited into and indentified in screening programs. Less than 1

percent are receiving any kind of counseling in a given year.

So certainly, one of the interventions that we need are the individually oriented counseling approaches, but we need to combine

that with these environmental approaches that will change the

whole culture, as Dr. Goldman talked about, that will make it less

likely that young people will have access to alcohol and be in situations where people drink to excess.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Goldman.

Dr. GOLDMAN. Yes. I was just going to say, it gives me the opportunity to underscore an important thing about this report. There

might be a tendency to view this report as sort of the final word

on this issue. In other words, we have looked at the literature and

we are now telling people how it needs to be done.

Unfortunately, in the process of looking at the literature, we

found out how little of what we have in terms of intervention and

prevention strategies is fully documented with college students. So

what we need to be doing here is setting off the beginning of a

15

process, and a hearing of this kind is exactly what we need. We

need to have these discussions take place.

We need to have colleges and universities sample from this menu

in a thoughtful way in relation to their own context and then actually test and evaluate what is going on, because the kinds of things

that we think are most appropriate and will be most comprehensive, mainly these large-scale environmental-type interventions

where everybody is on the same page and everybody has coordinated has not been done.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Tell us about that. In other words, Dr.

Hingson’s example with the impressive results was with a smaller

group that already showed it had a problem, but it was a very effective response. What does the data say about—the report shows

that this problem is more severe among freshmen. What does the

data show, if anything, about the effectiveness of some kind of educational program for every incoming freshman on campus?

Dr. GOLDMAN. The first thing to say is that pure education seems

not to do the trick, so the hopefulness of using those kinds of approaches exclusively is not very high. We just do not see great

promise in pure education, independent of these other kinds of

things.

An important thing to say is that some of the work that needs

to be done probably needs to be done before they get to college, because we have data to show that some of the worst drinking and

most serious problems happen within weeks, in the first few weeks

after arrival.

One of the things that is sort of hard to understand without looking closely at it is that drinking is driven by context, so that among

college students, they drink when they have the opportunity. They

drink on Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, when there

are not going to be classes the next day. They drink early in the

semester when there are not going to be exams the next day.

Those kinds of moments are the times when the most work needs

to be done. We are not doing those kinds of things right now, and

just telling students that problems are likely to arise is not going

to have an effect. So the whole thrust of this is to set this conversation in motion, to get presidents of colleges and universities meeting with their staff and with the local communities and with the

commercial outlets that are selling the alcohol and with the police

and get everybody on the same page and organize a system in

which—somebody early in this process used for me the concept of

squeezing a balloon, so that we do not have the air popping out in

another place from where we are squeezing. We have to do it all

at the same time.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Kington, does the NIAAA coordinate

in this concern with other relevant Federal agencies? I am thinking

here of the Department of Education, for instance, which might be

a natural point of contact with the universities, colleges, or the

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for

instance?

Dr. KINGTON. Absolutely. We have coordinated with the Department of Education, with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health

Services Administration, with the Office of National Drug Control

Policy, and with the Justice Department. We have had collaboraVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:37 Dec 02, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80600.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
16

tions with a large number of different agencies and we think that

is essential to actually address the problem.

Obviously, as an agency within the National Institutes of Health,

our focus is on the research agenda. Just to echo what Dr. Goldman had mentioned, one of the areas where we really need better

research is looking at environmental changes, simple things such

as reinstating Friday classes. On many college campuses, drinking

begins a day earlier because Friday classes have been eliminated.

Yet, we have not had rigorous scientific evaluations to assess those

types of changes.

Another simple change is switching from students as residential

advisors to adults as residential advisors, just shifting the type of

people who are living in the dorms with students.

So those are the areas that we are focusing on. We are particularly interested in improving the scientific base for changing the

environment, and we work closely with all of the relevant agencies

in the Federal Government. We think that is essential.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me ask each of you just a couple more

questions. Again, I said at the outset that I do not know that this

series of hearings will lead to specific legislative proposals, but

there was one made earlier. I wonder if you have any other suggestions for legislation that would respond to this problem.

Dr. KINGTON. Our focus, obviously, is on the research base, and

to the extent that we can have the resources to expand the amount

of research that we can do on these areas where there is anecdotal

evidence but not solid scientific evidence, we will be in a better position to make sure that the interventions that are done are effective, because one of the great frustrations now is that college presidents do not have all the information they need. We pull together

the best evidence that we have so that they can make the best decisions given the evidence. But if we can expand the evidence base,

we will be in a better position of telling them not only what the

choices are, but what the effect would be. So that is the thing that

we think would be most effective for improving the science base.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. In other words, resources for research. I

invite you to think about it and let the Committee know or let me

know what the dimensions of that would be, what kind of needs

you have.

Also, I think you said earlier in your opening statement that you

disseminate your work widely and directly to college and university

administrators.

Dr. KINGTON. This is the packet of material that was pulled together and we are sending it to every college and university in the

country and we actually have been delighted with the response. We

have had calls asking for hundreds of the packets of

information——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good.

Dr. KINGTON [continuing]. And we are gearing up to distribute

it even more widely. The website has also been a great media for

distributing information.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Hingson, any other ideas for

legislation?

Dr. HINGSON. Yes, a couple of things to say. First, there has been

research that indicates that comprehensive community programs

17

can reduce alcohol problems. These are programs where we organize across different departments of city government, the health

department, the schools department, the police department, parks

and recreation, engineering, and have people in city government

work with concerned private citizens, the Chamber of Commerce,

the PTA, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, people who care about

these issues.

A number of these studies have shown that among college-age— they have not specifically identified college students, but among

college-age, they can reduce the access of young people to alcohol,

they can reduce their alcohol consumption, they can reduce hospital emergency department assault injury admissions, motor vehicle crashes, alcohol-related crash deaths. So just as we need to

work cooperatively at the Federal Government across agencies, we

need to do the same thing at the community level.

One particular piece of legislation that I think would be important to look at, in over 30 States in the United States, there are

laws that permit insurance companies to withhold reimbursement

for people who have been injured under the influence of alcohol. If

we think about that, that is a terrible disincentive for medical care

providers in emergency department settings and trauma centers to

test for the problems that are leading patients to wash up on their

shores to begin with.

Connecticut, by the way, has a model law that I think the rest

of the country ought to consider with regards to reporting and testing for alcohol problems and requiring that that be entered into

medical records. So I think you could look to your own State for

legislation that I think would be a great benefit. In only about a

third, 20 percent of trauma centers is there routine testing for alcohol going on. Only about a third of primary care physicians systematically query their patients about their drinking. So we need to

move across entire communities, including the medical community,

to have legislation that would favor taking a look at this problem

rather than sort of hiding it under the rug.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very interesting. Dr. Goldman.

Dr. GOLDMAN. I do not have a specific recommendation for legislation, but I would like to underscore one point that I think would

be important to come down from Washington and become a more

generally agreed upon standard, and it underscores what I said

earlier, which is we would never introduce a new medication to

market without extensive testing. But routinely, problems come

along, we see problems, such as with college students, someone

comes along and markets a package. College presidents and administrators are sort of up against the wall to do something about it.

They listen to a story and they buy into it. Then what happens is

nothing much changes and everybody gets frustrated.

What we need to do is underscore not just the idea of research

in the sense of breaking new ground, but what we need is research

in the sense of evaluations. Every school that does its own program

needs to evaluate the consequences of that program to see what

works, to see the parts that might work and the parts that do not

work, to keep upgrading and moving it in a progressive direction.

It cannot just be because somebody has made a decision that we

will buy into this program and now that program is on campus and

18

1The prepared statement of Dr. Reardon appears in the Appendix on page 56.

we are those who now take care of the problem because we have

this program. That cannot be accepted as the standard any longer.

We have to move toward an evaluation standard.

Dr. HINGSON. Sir, if I could make one final point——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Go right ahead.

Dr. HINGSON. I think that there is a bill in Congress to roll back

the tax on beer. The preponderance of scientific evidence indicates

that price, if you increase the price of alcohol, that reduces consumption. Young people have less discretionary income, so they are

particularly likely to be affected by this. Not every study shows

this specifically among college students, but if we think about the

issue of the younger people are when they start to drink and start

to drink heavily, that lead to alcohol problems not only in college

but throughout adult life, I think we have every reason not to cut

back on the amount of tax that we have on alcohol.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I want to thank the three of you very

much for the work that you are doing, also for your testimony. We

would like to keep in touch with you as this Committee’s inquiry

goes on. Thanks very much.

I will now call on the second panel: Drew Hunter is the Executive Director of BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer Education Network;

Chief Robert Nolan, Chief of Police of the Hamden, Connecticut,

Police Department; Dr. Daniel Reardon, a parent; and Dr. John

Welty, the President of California State University at Fresno.

Thanks to all of you for being here. Dr. Reardon, thank you for

coming forward after the tragedy you have been through. I appreciate very much your willingness to testify. I know it will be helpful

to the Committee and I am sure it will be helpful to others who

will hear about it, so we would welcome your testimony now.

TESTIMONY OF DANIEL P. REARDON, D.D.S.,1 PARENT

Dr. REARDON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank

you for inviting me to this hearing. All I can say is that I would

truly prefer not to be here to discuss the issues of binge drinking

on college campuses and I prefer that my son Daniel be alive and

that he be finishing up his examinations at the University of Maryland and that he and I would be discussing plans for the summer,

for next year, and for his future.

For him, there really are no future plans. He died on Valentine’s

Day this year and he died in an environment to where it was a fraternity hazing and he was basically killed by his friends in an initiation for fraternity. That is a specific subculture of this issue, but

it certainly happened in the greater culture of binge drinking and

the use of alcohol amongst our youth in our society. So that is really the issue that I want to talk to, is the issue of the pervasive culture of alcohol.

As a parent, and both myself and Danny’s mom were very much

aware, certainly starting in grammar school and through the middle years in high school, of the extent of alcohol and drugs with our

youth, but what I have to say is that the real concern of Danny’s

mom and I was the use of illegal drugs. I have got to say that alcoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:37 Dec 02, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80600.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
19

hol really did not come up on the radar screen, up until my son’s

death.

What is extraordinary about this is that, literally, in the weeks

following my son’s death, is that five parents in this similar group

of friends and two patients in my dental practice came up to me

to share with me the brushes that their sons had with acute alcoholic poisoning and almost the potential death of their sons. This

absolutely stunned me and I realized that I was not alone in this

and that people were not aware and talking about this problem.

Of course, other groups and this distinguished panel of experts

here, I am now becoming—I am not an expert in this, I am just

a dad whose son has died as a result of this, but people are sharing

these horrific statistics to which I, sending my son off to school,

was just totally ignorant of, and he was certainly not aware of it,

either, and I know he did not go off to college to die.

So the experts are sharing the statistics of the rampant use of

alcohol in colleges and I think this is extraordinarily important and

I think it is important that light is being shed on this problem and

that universities must move out of their denial. I am glad to hear

that there are universities that are moving out of this denial.

I went to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and

I just found out this weekend, that a student was assaulted and

killed walking up a set of stairs on the campus. I mean, this is just

awful. I know the tragedy that those parents are going to experience, going to retrieve the body of their dead son.

And what is extraordinary about this is that this is happening

to the best of our youth. This is not a subculture. This is the best

of the best with parents who have the resources to educate and

give the very finest to their children and they are dying in these

statistics of 1,400 a year.

I think what astounded me was to find out that 40 percent, or

whatever the statistic, it is just horrific, are getting blind drunk

once a week. I could not believe this. And the number of children

in high schools that get drunk once a month, I think it is 25 percent. I was absolutely unaware of this.

And so this is a social problem that is not happening just to the

disenfranchised. It is happening to the best of our youth, from families that desire the best for their children and have the resources

to provide it. Something is really wrong here.

I am not an expert in these issues. I am only an expert on the

anguish of sleeping on the floor of an ICU unit for 6 days while

my son died, lay dying, which was every parent’s nightmare and

was totally preventable.

So I have had a chance over the last several months to think

about this and I think that universities—just as businesses have

employee assistance programs—is that we need some type of student assistance program to help kids who are in trouble. But there

has to be education and the kids have to know that they can call

someone when someone is in trouble.

I think that universities and fraternities need to control the environments they create. I think that the role of fraternities and sororities need to be seriously evaluated as to how they foster any

educational role on university campuses and why, after so many

20

1The prepared statement of Mr. Welty with attachments appears in the Appendix on page

58.

years of knowing about this problem, they have done so little to

prevent the tragedies.

I am glad that the Federal Government is looking into this and

becoming aware of the problem. It is a massive problem. Finally,

I think the Federal Government is going to have to look at the role

that they have in allowing the type of advertisements that the liquor industry has on TV. I have become very sensitized to this in

the last 3 months, of what these advertisements are like.

The thing is that my son was a level-headed kid. He wanted to

go into the Foreign Service. He wanted to study economics. He

wanted to be part of the Federal Government, and he is never

going to have that experience.

And so all I can say as a parent is that I am very glad that at

a national level this is coming into the consciousness of the government and the people, and thank you very much for having me here.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Dr. Reardon. Thanks very much.

Dr. Welty.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN D. WELTY, Ed.D.,1 PRESIDENT,

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FRESNO

Mr. WELTY. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity and

inviting me to participate in today’s hearing. Tragedy often results

in a call to action and it was the death of a student in the fall of

2000 at Chico State in California that caused Chancellor Charles

Reed to appoint a 21-member committee consisting of presidents,

vice presidents, faculty, students, and alumni of the California

State University to look at our alcohol policies and prevention programs.

The problem of student drinking is a complex one, as we have

heard, but the question that was posed to the Committee which I

chaired was simple and straightforward—how can we prevent any

more tragedies? We set for ourselves goals that were perhaps bold

and ambitious, but we knew from the outset that our impact was

far-reaching because our system has 388,000-plus students, 42,000

faculty located in 23 communities in California.

We began our work in December 2000. We began by meeting

with State and national experts who provided us with research and

insights into the best practices across the country. From these discussions, it became clear that presidential leadership would play a

critical role if we were to address this issue. It was made clear that

California State University presidents must make this a priority on

their campuses in a very demonstrable way. The ‘‘Be Vocal, Be

Visible, and Be Visionary’’ statement from the national Presidents’

Leadership Group established by the Higher Education Center for

Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention is an example of what our committee envisioned.

We also stressed the importance of developing a comprehensive

alcohol policy at each of our campuses which would be aligned with

this new systemwide initiative, and we also emphasized that once

policies were developed, they must be consistently enforced. Student involvement in policy planning and program implementation

21

was also identified as a very important part of our deliberation,

and, in fact, students were major participants in the work which

we undertook and made a major contribution to our end product.

We also learned that it was important to have on our campus

well-trained staff and that treatment programs needed to be available for those students who need them. And then we also learned

that it was important that we gather data in a very systematic way

to assess the nature and extent of the problem on our campuses.

As a result of this work, we focused on six key areas: Comprehensive policies; consistent enforcement; education and prevention; training, intervention, and treatment; assessment; and then,

finally, the development of adequate resources to sustain a longterm and comprehensive effort on our 23 campuses.

We also as a committee recommended that our campuses look at

using the social norms approach as a prevention model, not exclusively, but as one key component. Peer education programs, about

which you will hear shortly, were also stressed, along with the establishment of a broad range of campus and community partnerships that involve all stakeholders in the planning and implementation process.

In July 2001, our Board of Trustees adopted the recommended policy, and in addition, the Chancellor and trustees committed $1.1

million for this current academic year to begin to implement the

policies.

Immediately following this effort, each of the campuses were expected to create a Campus Advisory Council that consisted of key

stakeholders on the campus, and also members of our community,

law enforcement, prevention folks, and even owners and operators

of local liquor establishments. The policy also stressed the importance of these partnerships and placed an emphasis upon enforcing

existing laws, decreasing the use of alcohol in the promotion of

business and community events, reducing underage sales, and

drastically curtailing promotions that encourage excessive drinking,

such as happy hours and two drinks that can be bought for the

price of one. We also focused on expanding alcohol-free recreational

events for young people, both on and off campus.

I mentioned earlier that one of the recommendations adopted by

the board was that of a social norms approach. We undertook for

all of our staff a conference sponsored in conjunction with BACCHUS and GAMMA this year that provided training in this area.

But it is important, I think, to recognize that we took one additional step, and that was we partnered with six State of California

agencies ranging from Alcohol Beverage Control to Highway Patrol,

Office of Traffic Safety. That partnership has now yielded $2 million in support for programs on our campuses that will be very important as we implement this effort.

Finally, I would like to comment on three suggestions that I

might have regarding how the Federal Government might be able

to assist in the efforts that we have undertaken.

First, it is clear that we have much to learn regarding this complex and challenging problem and Federal support for high-quality

and comprehensive research is desperately needed.

Second, we desperately need to encourage individuals to enter careers in alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment.

22

1The prepared statement of Chief Nolan appears in the Appendix on page 77.

And finally, I urge you to evaluate existing programs that are

currently funded and to change criteria in such a way that would

allow institutions of higher education and governmental agencies to

work together in partnerships to address this problem. Currently,

there is a prevention from the ability to work together because of

various regulations and restrictions.

As a system, our California State University is committed to continue to address this problem. We know we have just begun, but

our goal is to ensure that the last call will no longer be the final

call for any of our students. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Dr. Welty. That is a very impressive report. While my mind is focused on it, give me an example,

if you can, of some existing Federal law or regulation that is preventing the kind of cooperation that you wisely would like to see.

Mr. WELTY. I certainly would be happy to follow up in a little

more detail, but I think we found that in many grant programs,

there are restrictions that either do not allow cooperation between

a research program and campuses or other types of restrictions

that narrow the focus of a program, which then does not allow for

a comprehensive view of this issue on the campuses. I will certainly

be happy to follow up with some specific examples.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. That would be great. We are

going to leave the record of the hearing open for 2 weeks after

today for submissions of that kind, or if any of the other Members

of the Committee wish to ask some questions.

I am really personally proud to welcome Chief Robert Nolan

here. I have known the Chief for a long time. He is a distinguished

member of the greater New Haven community, where I have lived

for more than four decades now, and has been on the front lines

of dealing with this problem in response to, particularly, a series

of tragic alcohol-related deaths and injuries at one particular school

of higher education in Hamden, Quinnipiac University. Chief

Nolan, thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT F. NOLAN,1 CHIEF OF POLICE, TOWN

OF HAMDEN, CONNECTICUT

Chief NOLAN. Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Chairman. The invitation was really appreciated by me to have the opportunity to

discuss this very serious issue of binge drinking on college campuses.

Recent tragedies involving college students in my own community have prompted my department to work even more closely with

university officials on several fronts to help curb what is a serious

national public health and safety problem. While I have three universities within my jurisdiction, I would like to limit my testimony

this morning to providing you with an overview of the close working relationship my department has forged with the university

known as Quinnipiac University of Hamden, Connecticut.

Before the current academic year, a year during which three

Quinnipiac students were killed in alcohol-related accidents and an

officer was seriously injured when struck by a student driving

under the influence coming out of a house party, and a number of

23

injuries occurred to individuals as a result of other alcohol-related

accidents, my staff and I began meeting with Quinnipiac’s management team.

Through an open exchange of data and ideas, we have developed

what I feel is a model for university and law enforcement relations

as it pertains to alcohol abuse by college students. And yet, despite

our educational and enforcement efforts, we were unable to avoid

three families having their lives irreversibly changed when they

lost their loved ones.

As someone previously mentioned, they have met with the loved

ones and mothers and parents of some of these students that were

killed or injured in accidents. I have had probably the worst times

in my career of 31 years having to speak with parents. I am, however, convinced that without the proactive steps we have taken in

the areas of education and enforcement, even more fatalities or injuries could have resulted.

I would like to share with you some of the programs currently

in place as well as some additional measures that together we can

take to address this national crisis.

The Hamden Police Department’s Street Crime Unit, along with

our community police officers, present alcohol-related programs to

the students at the university on a continuous basis throughout the

academic year. The university also extends alcohol awareness and

educational programs in resident halls that house Quinnipiac undergraduates. These educational programs are provided continually

with special emphasis during National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week.

In my opinion, the Quinnipiac University administration deals

diligently and cooperatively with our department and responds

with disciplinary action. This extends especially to students who

violate the alcohol policy. Incidents of alcohol abuse off-campus are

also dealt with in a swift and effective manner. This is particularly

important inasmuch as these problems seem to have escalated in

our town since students have been moved off campus. The recent

relocation of senior students to off-campus housing certainly seems

to have a direct correlation to the increase in alcohol-related accidents.

The sophistication of fake ID operatives is staggering. Standardization of licenses or State or Federal identification cards and the

ability of issuing jurisdictions to share information is imperative.

A fake ID was found in the possession of a Quinnipiac student who

was killed in an alcohol-related motor vehicle accident last month

when his car, traveling at excessive speed, hit a tree and became

airborne twice.

Checkpoints have been proven as an effective deterrent to DUI.

Increased funding for personnel and vehicles would allow local enforcement officials to expand checkpoints as they are not only a

means of apprehending and enforcing, but also we find them a good

manner in which to continue to educate students about the dangers

of drinking and driving.

Other programs that we have in place at the present time which

the university has assisted us with is we use undercover officers

going into the house parties and, in turn, making available to us

the information needed to obtain search warrants which we serve

24

on these particular homes, either college-owned or private homes

that house students.

The Hamden Police Department, in conjunction with Quinnipiac

University, intends to implement additional programs in the effort

to combat this problem, such as expanding the safe ride program

which was developed, offering the police department’s availability

as a means of transportation with no questions asked when an individual may have to drive under the influence to get back to their

housing. We are attempting to work with local taxicab companies

to establish a reasonable reduced fare to transport students under

these conditions, as well. These programs will be considerably more

effective and widespread with the existence of Federal grant or

State grant money.

In addition, the Town of Hamden’s Department of Police Service

has reached an agreement with Quinnipiac University whereby in

the beginning of the fall semester 2002, two police officers will be

assigned specifically to the college campus, 7 days a week, through

different shifts. They will be used in a similar manner as the school

resource officers are being used in public schools at the present

time. They will interact with students and administrators in an effort to continue to educate and eradicate alcohol-related issues.

Let me close by saying that I am not here today advocating prohibition. We cannot kid ourselves about the widespread abuse of alcohol by underage students. The ability to eliminate the consumption is almost impossible. We will continue to strive to reduce alcohol consumption, eradicate binge drinking, and eliminate DUI

cases, most important, save lives. Additional education programs

and enforcement efforts by the university and the Town of Hamden

Police Department will be effective tools in this fight.

I urge my colleagues throughout the country to form a campuscommunity coalition, work together with the colleges and universities in their community to increase awareness of binge drinking

and promote personal responsibility among college students, the ultimate solution to this national problem. Thank you very much,

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Chief. That was excellent testimony. Is there any activity, to the best of your knowledge, for instance, in the National Association of Chiefs of Police along the

lines you have talked about?

Chief NOLAN. There has been discussion. Since research has

brought it to the forefront as it has, which, unfortunately, our particular town found out through experience, we are finding that we

are having more injuries, accidents, and deaths from this particular

problem than the illegal drug activity.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That correlates with what Dr. Reardon

said. The numbers at Quinnipiac are just stunning and really unsettling. I have been using the number four and you said three, but

I think it is three deaths in this academic year and then I think

there may have been one in the year before.

Chief NOLAN. In a combination of motor vehicle accidents and alcohol poisoning, we have had over the last several years approximately five.

25

1The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter appears in the Appendix on page 81.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And just to highlight something you have

said, your observation is that the problem is more intense as the

number of students living off-campus increases.

Chief NOLAN. Quinnipiac, due to expansion, has moved almost,

if not all, of their senior and graduate students off campus. We

have found in going back and reviewing our records that the accidents and problems with DWI began to increase substantially as

this took place.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Welty, while we are on this, is the

pattern that Chief Nolan has described of the campus-community

relationship, here in this case between the university and police department, typical of what is happening in California under the

State University system plan that you have discussed?

Mr. WELTY. It is a key part of our plan and it actually, with the

support we have now received from the State agencies, they are encouraging highway patrols, and city police to work with us much

more closely. As we reviewed this problem, it is clear to us that integration needs to occur in each community if we are going to be

effective.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. Drew Hunter, thanks for being

here. Tell us about your organization and what we can do to be

helpful.

TESTIMONY OF DREW HUNTER,1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

BACCHUS AND GAMMA PEER EDUCATION NETWORK

Mr. HUNTER. All right. Mr. Chairman, it is a great honor and

privilege to be here, as well. I guess I get to close for the panel.

I am here today as the Executive Director of the BACCHUS and

GAMMA Peer Education Network, a 27-year-old student leadership

organization focusing on alcohol abuse prevention and related student health and safety issues. We presently have affiliates on more

than 1,000 colleges and universities and our organization is all

about partnerships and we have been working on this issue since

the last time the NIAAA spoke out on this, which was their 50 Plus

12 project in the early 1970’s, and that was actually the founding

of much of what our organization has begun.

Before getting to the heart of my remarks, I am pleased that

there was a panel from this College Task Force of the NIAAA.

Their recent report on college drinking is a significant achievement

because it supports many of the strategies that our organization

has been advocating for some time, including the importance of engaging student leadership on this topic through peer education.

This report will be very helpful in the upcoming academic year as

we press our host campuses for more attention to this important

issue. Being that there were no students on the panel today, I will

try to play that role, despite my advancing age.

From my experience, there are really four key components of a

successful campus alcohol prevention program that need most attention. The first is a strong need of a commitment from campus

presidents and their administrations. Simply stated, college presidents and their administrations must prioritize their commitment

26

and resources to work on this issue so that it is truly a vital part

of the campus mission.

I am pleased to share time on this panel with Dr. John Welty,

President of Fresno State. Having personally participated in the

CSU effort led by him and Chancellor Reed, I am comfortable that

his testimony covered this comprehensive approach in greater detail, so I will move on.

But before I do, it is important to note that despite all the publicity this issue has received, we know there are many colleges and

universities that still do not support a full-time alcohol educator or

staff person dedicated to these efforts. We know there are many

campuses that have higher budgets for one-time events, like homecoming, than they do for year-round alcohol education program.

And we know that there are some colleges and universities that

have solid alcohol policies written in their student handbook, but

the policies are seldom put into practice on campus, and that is

where our troubles begin.

As I say to you, as long as this remains true, then it is also true

that reducing alcohol-related harm is not central to those campuses’ missions, and this disparity in addressing the issue is why

we need leadership from the top down, and again, I want to commend Dr. Welty and the CSU system.

No. 2 is a strong campus policy and the willingness to enforce

that policy. As usual, whenever you are faced with a complicated

case here in Washington, the answer is not automatically that

more policy is needed. Nor is a federalized one-size-fits-all national

policy going to work for the diverse number and types of institutions out there. But it is the commitment to use the policies that

are already in place that will solve many of our problems. This is

what our campuses need to do on an individual basis to better address this issue.

At the risk of creating a sound bite, campus policies and student

service programs really can be narrowed down to a simple message

that needs to get out to our students and their families, the simple

message of get smart, get help, or get out.

What I am talking about here is the need to get smart. If a student gets confronted for underage drinking or drinking in a highrisk fashion, the campus needs to first give them a chance to get

smart. We must start by forcing these students to get mandatory

education on the alcohol issue.

Then get help. If a student continues to break policy a second

time, we need to respond in a caring and compassionate way by offering that student a chance to get help. We need to meet with

these students and, where permissible and appropriate, engage

their parents in the discussions and offer these students assessment services and counseling.

And finally, to get out, and this is sometimes a tough one. But

if students continue to drink in a high-risk fashion and are unwilling to change their behavior, we have to have the power to say, get

out. Being dismissed from school would get their attention and may

influence their understanding that they have bigger problems. And

as importantly, it says to the rest of the student body, this type of

behavior is not acceptable here.

27

No. 3, any successful program must include student peer education. Everyone working with young people knows that we have

to impact students in their peer groups. We need to engage students to be leaders, role models, activists, and caring friends when

it comes to stopping alcohol abuse. When students do get involved

in the issue through peer education, there are some things that we

can count on.

We know that peer educators make healthier choices themselves

and they are comfortable confronting others about high-risk behaviors. We know that a significant percentage of students say they

would rather talk to a peer instead of a professional counselor

about troubling issues. And we know that students learn a great

deal about the culture of the institution from watching their peers

for clues of what is acceptable and what is not.

Therefore, we must continue to advocate and support these peer

educators as a vital part of the alcohol education process. Let us

face it. They are there long after the administrators have gone

home for the day. They can make a difference when it is needed.

And finally, No. 4, we need to market healthy norms to our students. It is simply a fact of life that you will get much more attention with a headline or lead story that says, ‘‘Students Are Out of

Control and Dying,’’ than you will with one that says, ‘‘Most Students are Doing Just Fine.’’ But you know what? The real truth of

the matter is that most college students balance their bottles and

books. According to the American College Health Association data,

significantly more students leave our institutions due to health and

financial problems than drinking problems.

Social norms, as highlighted by Dr. Welty, is a prevention tool

that works by using actual student behavior to market the healthy

norms, such as broadly sharing a wide variety of messages that the

majority of the students are making healthy choices.

Where this has been used, such as institutions like Hobart and

William Smith College in New York, they saw a 40 percent drop

in their high-risk drinking over the course of just 4 years. Northern

Illinois University saw a 44 percent drop over the course of 10

years.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. What kinds of programs were those?

Mr. HUNTER. These are social norms-based programs, which are

marketing campaigns looking at the actual student data, and then

they develop widespread marketing campaigns from the time you

enter campus to the time you graduate, marketing health, really

trying to promote an environment or a culture on the campus that

the majority of the students do not drink in ways that cause harm

to themselves or others.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Is it marketing health generally or is it

specifically dealing with the dangers of alcohol?

Mr. HUNTER. The dangers of alcohol primarily is where we have

seen this, though you are beginning to see this approach using a

variety of other issues, including tobacco, illicit drugs, and on diversity and acceptance issues in higher education, as well.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And again, these programs cover all the

students. This is not just kids who have had some problem.

Mr. HUNTER. No, these are broad. This would be literally from

the moment you enter the campus, you will see the same type of

28

advertising or marketing you might see on broader topics or whatever. You will see messages, posters, websites, all sorts of stuff promoting the broader health of the student body, using the student

data that they have taken from the established surveying techniques, and it was also highlighted in the NIAAA report as one of

the areas to look at.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Just go over then, again, the results that

you cited.

Mr. HUNTER. Sure, and there are a large number of campuses

that have done this, but highlighting two, Hobart and William

Smith College saw a 40 percent drop in their high-risk drinking

over the course of 4 years, and that is the binge drinking definition

that was talked about earlier. Northern Illinois University saw a

44 percent drop over the course of 10 years using this technique,

and I will say this technique is part of their comprehensive

program——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So these colleges may do other things, as

well, perhaps cooperating with local law enforcement?

Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. In fact, the Northern Illinois University, they have gone to law enforcement and looked at their data.

Not only have they reduced the reporting of these high-risk drinking levels, but then they have also seen the concurrent drops in a

lot of the reported crimes and injuries and things of that nature,

including, I believe, sales of alcohol in the community in some of

those areas.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Have you finished your testimony?

Mr. HUNTER. Actually, I had one more point I was going to make,

but then——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Go right ahead. I interrupted you.

Mr. HUNTER. No, I appreciate your input.

Finally, I do want to address something that we have heard a

few times today and that is when we spend too much time highlighting the problem, college students binge drink. We mistakenly

are feeding into the misperception that this is what campus is really like, which is why many of us in the higher education community refrain from using the popular yet misguided term ‘‘binge

drinking’’ in describing student alcohol use.

First of all, when you think of going on a binge or being a binge

drinker, what comes to mind is someone who really needs help,

who is out of control. Yet the current definition of four drinks if you

are a woman, five drinks if you are a man, during one sitting in

a previous two-week period does not necessarily match that perception. In addition, the definition conveniently labels one-half the students, nearly one-half of the students as being high-risk while ignoring the very factors that contribute to alcohol intoxication and

risk. The overuse of the term ‘‘binge drinking’’ has really become

a joke on campuses as far as many students and really some administrators are concerned.

It would be more productive if we would focus our efforts to talk

about those students who drink and put themselves or others at

risk by engaging in unsafe behaviors. When engaged, college students are likely to support efforts to reduce drinking and driving.

They want to reduce incidents of sexual assault on their campuses.

29

They want to reduce noise in their living areas, and they want to

deter vandalism and violence on campus.

We have had great luck in making students part of the solution

on these issues, but we have to engage them in the process and

bring them along with us. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Hunter.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You know, it is interesting. You quoted at

the end something I saw in your prepared testimony and I was

going to ask you about, which is the statement, ‘‘when you think

of going on a binge, what comes to mind is someone who really

needs help, who is out of control. Yet the current definition of four

drinks for a woman and five for a man during one sitting in the

previous 2-week period does not necessarily match the perception.’’ What do you mean? I think most of us would assume that is a lot

of alcohol at one sitting.

Mr. HUNTER. Sure, and please forgive me. In a 5-minute testimony, you cannot always go into the details you would like and we

would be the last organization to not talk about this as a very serious problem. It is what we are about. It is what we do.

But the problem with the binge drinking definition as it is currently put out there, and it has been useful as a benchmark when

we are looking at measuring programs, but it does not put some

of the factors that impact intoxication, or as our Chief of Police

over here would talk about, things that you can measure from a

BAC. Sure, five drinks in an hour is a lot of alcohol and virtually

any one of us on this panel would be at a level where we would

be looking at a BAC where we would not be safe to drive a car.

But the definition does not ask about time. It does not ask about

size of the person drinking, whether they have eaten, a lot of the

factors that will involve your BAC. So what it does is it conveniently captures as large a portion of students as possible for purposes of raising attention to this issue. But the same student that

may drink those five drinks in an hour and starts seeing their BAC

going off the chart, the student next to them may drink those five

drinks over a 6- or 7-hour period watching two sporting events. The

definition has no way of breaking that out and is why a lot of researchers will not use it and why a lot of students discount it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I see. So if we can focus, it is the one sitting part of the definition that is bothering you because you would

prefer to judge it by some standard of blood alcohol content.

Mr. HUNTER. Correct, because I think that would be something

that we clearly could say that at this level of BAC, these types of

things are likely to happen. And I just think sometimes, particularly if you are looking at the social norms approach which has

shown some effectiveness, the more we highlight the problems

going on, the more students who are coming to the campus believe

they have to drink that way to fit in.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. HUNTER. And that is really part of the peer acceptance formula that causes some problems.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. What is your reaction to the discussion

we had with the last panel on distinguishing binge drinking, whatever you want to call it, from the broader problem of alcoholism in

our society, or is there a distinction?

30

Mr. HUNTER. Well, the binge drinking definition, as it is used, I

do not think is a gauge for alcoholism. The problem with, again,

the term ‘‘binge drinking’’ is that people assume when you are talking about a binge, you are talking about an out-of-control episodic

blackout type drinking, which, again, is not necessarily—some of

the students in that binge drinking definition may go ahead and

do that that evening, but it is not, again, the 40 percent. A significantly lower percentage of the students would be qualifying in that.

At the college age, it is rarer to have the full alcohol dependency

diagnosed, but certainly these types of patterns, unchecked and unchallenged in college, can lead to the development of alcoholism

over time, and some of our college students do come to us already

with full alcoholic tendencies, needing of treatment and other services, and more of our campuses need to provide those services and

assessments and help us find those and get them out of the system

and properly treated early on.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Reardon, I agree with everything you

said, but one of the things you said earlier, stunned me, as well as

the 40 percent of students who say that at one point or another

they were binge drinkers. What year was your son in at the University of Maryland?

Dr. REARDON. He was in his freshman year.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Freshman year. To the best of your

knowledge, this was not a situation where he had what might be

called an ongoing drinking problem?

Dr. REARDON. No.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. This was exactly the nightmare we are

discussing, which was an episodic or momentary situation where he

drank to excess?

Dr. REARDON. Well, he was in a fraternity at that time and he

was pledging.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. REARDON. And the Sunday before, he told me that in this initiation, there would be no alcohol. So to get that phone call at 5

o’clock in the morning on Friday morning, it was, of course, every

parent’s nightmare, my nightmare.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. Go ahead.

Dr. REARDON. But further than that, it is a culture, it is a subculture of what is going on in campuses, and it appears that what

happened that evening—and it is under investigation, I do not

have all the facts, but it appears that after a certain amount of alcohol consumption is that a beer funnel was put into his throat and

then a half-a-quart of bourbon was poured down his throat. And

then when he passed out with the fire barn or whatever, the EMT

200 yards away, no one called.

And this is something that you said, Mr. Hunter, is the ability— and also Dr. Welty—is that kids can get help and that there were

kids in that fraternity who were afraid to call either because

Danny would get thrown out of school or they would get thrown out

of school, and so they let him pass out.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. What has the response been of the university so far?

Dr. REARDON. None.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Really?

31

Dr. REARDON. I have had no contact.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. None at all?

Dr. REARDON. I received a letter from the president of the university and he stated that every now and then, a kid’s luck runs out

and Danny’s luck ran out. I thought it was just a terrible response

to his death.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. To the best of your knowledge, no disciplinary action has been taken against the fraternity?

Dr. REARDON. The fraternity, the house has been suspended.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It has. And is the university doing the investigation or are the police doing it or both?

Dr. REARDON. It is being investigated by the Prince Georges

County police, and I believe the university police are cooperating

with the official investigation by P.G. County.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Am I right that this just happened in

February?

Dr. REARDON. This happened in February, on February 8, yes.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me ask you, just to talk a little bit

more, you spoke during your opening statement about whether

there is anything you would—of course, this just came out of the

darkness of night with you, but whether there is anything you

would tell parents of kids now to look for or demand from their universities and what you would hope colleges would do to try to protect other kids from this kind of tragedy.

Dr. REARDON. Given the amount of time that Danny’s mom and

I spent on this issue with our kids, I really do not think that parents can really effectively intervene once the kids go off to college.

And I have got to say that what Dr. Welty is saying, and also Mr.

Hunter, as to how they are trying to respond and help kids, I think

this is absolutely critical and I know that none of that existed on

the University of Maryland campus, and so I am very pleased to

hear that this is happening.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You and Dan’s mom had talked to him

and your children about alcohol abuse?

Dr. REARDON. Yes. But I do have to say is that our focus really

was not on alcohol.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Dr. REARDON. We were much more concerned about the use of

marijuana in high school.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I bet that would be the case of most parents in America.

Dr. REARDON. Yes. It just was not on the radar screen.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Dr. Reardon.

Dr. REARDON. You are welcome.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Dr. Welty, what about the extent to

which—I mean, you have given us a case where the California University system had a death and just committed itself to doing everything it could to make sure nothing like that happened again

and you are dealing with a large, very prominent, high quality system. How would you describe the extent of awareness and commitment to do something about this problem we are talking about, alcoholism, binge drinking on the campuses, among your peers

throughout the country, among the administrators of the colleges

and universities in America?

32

Mr. WELTY. I think there is variation, but I would say, based on

my experience in four other States, there is concern about this

issue. I do think that one of the things that we need to focus more

clearly on, and has been mentioned already, and that is the need

for a comprehensive approach to this issue. It is not just having a

policy, but it is a policy that is enforced, complemented by a strong

education and treatment program, and then an ongoing review of

how we are doing. I do think there is a need, probably, for us all

to be continually reminded of the importance of this issue, but I do

think it is a concern among certainly my counterparts across the

country.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Does the California State system have a

plan for evaluating results under the program you put into effect?

Mr. WELTY. Yes, we do. There is a requirement that each campus

reports to the board every 2 years, both evaluating what we have

done but also looking at the progress that we are making addressing the issue on our campuses. This is our first year, so next year

will be the first of those reports.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do I understand correctly that your campus and others in the system are using the social norms approach

that Mr. Hunter described?

Mr. WELTY. Yes. Most of our campuses are using that approach,

again, not as the only effort but as one of several efforts that are

being undertaken as part of the prevention and education program.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Chief, did you want to add something?

Chief NOLAN. I totally agree with the other gentlemen on the

panel, but there are a couple of areas that we found in Hamden.

One, I prefer not to use the word ‘‘campus.’’ In our experience, the

least amount of problems are on campus. It is off campus that we

have the problems with the students. So it is more a universitystudent problem. What takes place on the campus usually does not

create the problem off the campus. The deaths take place off the

campus. The accidents and injuries take place off the campus.

I think, I know I have and I know Dr. John Lahey has, it finally

became aware to us that there are several groups that have to

work together. There has to be the community, the police department, the college administrators, and the parents. I have been at

meetings and conferences where people try to bear all the responsibility to the parents or to the college or to the police department.

It is a combination of all.

I know there are certain areas that colleges have problems. One

of these accidents involved a student, and when I met with the parents, they had no idea that this student had an ongoing problem

with alcohol binge drinking. To this day, I cannot imagine the

shock when autopsy reports came back for this poor woman, none

whatsoever.

It should be incumbent upon the universities to make parents

aware of this if there is an ongoing problem or if they are having

a problem with their child. There are certain things that come into

play on privacy and what have you. This young man or person may

still be alive if the parent had been aware of the situation.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Chief NOLAN. That is the area that I become concerned, where

we have found with several of the universities we have met with

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that they want to keep everything in-house. They want to keep it

very quiet. That is not going to work. It is just not going to happen.

And to take disciplinary action or have policies governing the students’ activities off campus, I think is as important, if not more important than on campus. I know of universities in our area that if

the incident takes place off campus, no action is taken against the

student on campus. It is not their responsibility, not their concern.

They have major problems with that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Those are very important points. Obviously, we send a message of how seriously we take something if we

attach a penalty to it.

Mr. Hunter, what is your impression about—your program is on

a lot of campuses around the country. Maybe the ones you are on

answer the question I am going to ask, but my impression is exactly what Chief Nolan has just said, that there are colleges and

universities that are in denial to one extent or another about this,

either because it is such a difficult problem, human problem, or it

is dismissed as just what happens, unfortunately, tragically, to kids

when they are in college, or they do not want to publicize it because they are concerned about the impact on the school’s reputation. What is your experience with all that?

Mr. HUNTER. I think there is a certain amount of difference campus to campus, and the reason, even though I was asked to be here

specifically on the topic of peer education, that I wanted to reiterate the leadership needed from the college presidents is because

so many more things happen when you get the college president involved.

I could tell you scores of campuses and dedicated student leaders

and prevention professionals that were operating in a vacuum and

literally holding bake sales to raise money to do the types of programming, to get people more aware of alcohol poisoning, try to

change policies on campus so that students are not discouraged

from addressing a passed-out student and getting them help because of fear of getting in trouble.

That is one of the issues we have tried very hard to push, is that

if a student has drunk themselves to the point where they are

passed out, where there is any concern over their health, get them

help immediately. We are trying to get amnesty-type policies in the

residence halls so the students that do that then are not in fear

of being penalized or for the student themselves. At least we have

gotten the student to the hospital and addressed the situation.

But it varies a lot campus to campus. The awareness to the issue

is huge, and in this day and age, there is no excuse, I think, for

presidents not to be making this a central part of their mission because we have got to protect the lives of the students and the people in the community where our campuses are. It seems to be getting a lot better, but funding, particularly in these days with State

cutbacks, I expect next year is going to be a very hard funding

issue for a lot of institutions and programs like ours are the ones

that you start seeing impacted because we are not always seen as

the core of the academic mission of the campus.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Are programs usually funded by the universities themselves?

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Mr. HUNTER. Yes. Our peer education groups, in order to be affiliated with us, must have a faculty or staff advisor of the campus,

who is employed by the campus, working with the group. It must

be a recognized student organization, either through the student

government or through whatever student affairs department would

be hosting it, and their funding generally comes from their health

education-type budgets or student government or student activities

fees. But when they have to rely on just student activities fees,

often they are doing supplemental fundraising, which make it very

hard for them to have the type of resources to address the issues

that they want to dedicate themselves to.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. I am very pleased to have been

joined now by Senator Tom Carper, my colleague from Delaware,

an important member of the Committee who was, before coming to

the Senate, the Governor of Delaware. Senator Carper.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

Senator CARPER. Mr. Chairman, thanks so much, and thank you

for holding this hearing. To our witnesses today, we appreciate

very much not just you joining us but your efforts in these areas.

The issue of binge drinking comes close to home for a lot of us.

My wife and I are raising two boys, 12 and 13, and the only binge

drinking we worry about in our house is chocolate milk shakes

right now, but in a few years, we will probably have some further

worries to take into account.

I went to graduate school at the University of Delaware, but I

went to Ohio State as an undergraduate and was a member of a

fraternity there which actually runs a national campaign that focuses on trying to reduce the incidence of drinking among its members. But at my old fraternity house at Ohio State about a year or

so ago, we had a student who died, I think in a room that I used

to live in when I was an upperclassman at Ohio State. So this is

one that comes close to us, and I think he died from a combination

of drinking and taking drugs. Our chapter has since been closed at

Ohio State and we will have to see what happens in the future, but

that young man’s life has been snuffed out. This one comes close

to home.

At Ohio State and the University of Delaware and all kinds of

colleges around the country, we have not only students from the

United States of America, but we also have students from other

countries. We similarly have American students abroad in colleges

throughout the world.

I was wondering if we have some sense of whether colleges and

universities in other countries face a similar kind of problem with

binge drinking. Is this strictly an American phenomenon or is this

something that is happening on college campuses around the

world?

Chief NOLAN. If I could just—and it is not scientific or a study,

I happened to be at a meeting with some representatives from law

enforcement overseas and asked that specific question. The only

answer they really had, they certainly do have some problems related to drinking, but they do not see it as we do. The only reason

they could give me was that in certain areas, they are brought up

in a different culture, and in many cases are exposed to alcohol at

35

a much earlier age than here. Their reasoning was that when they

got to the point of university, it was not a big deal to them. It was

not something that they had the first opportunity to experience and

they do not run into as many problems. Whether that is factual,

true or not, that is the explanation I was given by law enforcement

people from overseas.

Senator CARPER. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Dr. REARDON. Senator, my son last year at age 18 traveled to Europe by himself and he visited 15 countries and I tied up with him

in Budapest. One of the things he said to me, as a student, he was

really astounded at the European students. He said, well, they

seem to have this alcohol thing—he used the word ‘‘booze’’—he said

they seem to have this booze thing under control. He said, why is

it so crazy back home? And I said, well, that is an issue when you

come back to the United States you are going to have to deal with

because it really is crazy. So he was very aware of this and aware

of the difference. He lived with a Swiss family and he traveled

throughout all of Europe. So I think that is a significant question

to answer. Why is it out of control here, or why are these

issues—— Senator CARPER. Did he have any observations, any thoughts as

to why that is the case?

Dr. REARDON. No, it was just one of these casual statements. But

the other thing Mr. Hunter is saying is that there are universities

that really are working on this and there are other universities

that are not. The extraordinary thing about the University of

Maryland is that there was a death also in a fraternity house just

two houses down from where my son died just 5 months previous

to this. So it seems as if on some campuses, the death of a child

is OK. I am listening to Dr. Welty here and one child dies and everyone comes down like a SWAT team, that even one child is too

much. I just think that is an extraordinary approach. I wish every

campus in the United States would look at this with the severity

that one child’s death is just simply too many.

Senator CARPER. Mr. Hunter.

Mr. HUNTER. Back on the international issue, our organization is

an international organization. We work with a network of more

than 100 campuses in Canada, a network of campuses in Mexico

dealing particularly with the impaired driving issue there, and

then Australia, New Zealand, and a few other scattered places

around the country.

The differences in how they do their program tend to be more

drinking age related, that their college students are already of legal

age to drink in those countries, so they always have to amend the

types of stuff we do here because we are obviously concerned a bit

more with the illegality factor when we put our stuff together.

I think Canadian institutions, from some of the data I have seen,

have seen very similar issues that we are, and because of the rural

nature of a lot of the colleges in the Canadian area and the drinking to major cities, they are doing quite a bit on the impaired driving.

But what we have not seen as much, and granted, it is still a

fairly rare instance here in the United States, but the alcohol poisoning, drinking themselves to death type situation does not seem

36

to be as apparent in other countries, which may or may not be the

fact that their cultures seem to have ingrained it more in their everyday life versus the extreme behaviors that we see. I think a lot

of our students are going out and drinking in the community in a

very fast and irresponsible manner, partly because they are afraid

Chief Nolan’s people will be finding them and arresting them. So

much of our drinking goes on in unsupervised, unlicensed, unregulated environments that I think that is certainly part of the concern that we are seeing.

Senator CARPER. Have you all had a chance to look at the incidence of binge drinking by foreign students who come to this country, who come from different cultures? How do they behave? Do

they behave similarly or differently from Americans who have

grown up here within our own culture?

Mr. HUNTER. I am not aware of any specific studies or data to

that. Ancillary, I do not think foreign students are causing the majority of the problems on our campuses that we are seeing.

Senator CARPER. My guess is you are probably right. Anyone

else, any thoughts? What I am getting at here is, is this a peculiarly American problem? We have laws that are designed, State

laws that I helped to enact and Federal laws that we have enacted,

too, that are designed to try to make sure that young people do not

consume alcohol. They cannot buy it until they are 21 years of age.

A lot of times, we find that young people are getting alcohol anyway, drinking illegally, sometimes under those ages, and sometimes 21 and older drink excessive amounts of alcohol.

Meanwhile, over in Europe and other places, where apparently,

and I have heard this anecdotally as well, families introduce their

young people to wine or to other alcoholic beverages at an earlier

age, and as a result, there is less fascination with it when kids

turn 18, 19, 20, or 21.

My sense is, my gut tells me this is something that we need to

be aware of and to be mindful of. I say that as an old Southern

Baptist who grew up in a teetotaling family and who still does not

consume much more than a glass of wine from time to time.

One other issue I would like to raise, Mr. Chairman, if I could,

with these witnesses is the issue of identification. I do not know

if you have already talked about that or not. Have you?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Chief Nolan talked somewhat about a

program that they have put into effect in the area to deal with fake

IDs, but it is a relevant question.

Senator CARPER. We have spent a fair amount of time in these

halls since September 11 talking about identification—a national

identification card. I have said in a number of responses to the

media who have asked me if I thought it was a good idea, I said

if those ID cards were not much better than the fake ones that kids

are using at the University of Delaware, or other college towns, to

purchase alcohol, it may not provide all that much in the way of

enhanced security.

What are your thoughts with respect to improved IDs, biometrics

or whatever they call them? What is the term for the ID cards that

use some part of our physiology, biometrics?

Chief NOLAN. The ID situation is probably one of the largest part

of the problem that we have in our area. To give you an example—

37

also another part of the ongoing program we have—we check the

local establishments, the bars, at least twice a week, sometimes

more often. We have been in barrooms that would hold maximum

tight 50 people and find 35 to 40 of them with fake IDs, underage

drinkers, students in the particular establishment. This one in particular, I can tell you, videotapes the people coming through the

door, checks the IDs, makes them sign an affidavit, and he has told

me that he is ready to just shut the doors. The IDs are so well done

that our officers have a hard time sometimes.

I maintain, especially after September 11, that there should be

some type of standardization for a driver’s license nationally and/

or national ID cards with either a metallic strip or bar-coding

where an establishment can run it through just like a credit card

and immediately know whether it is a legitimate ID and the age

on it.

The other thing we are doing is we are changing some of the

charges. Prior to this, and again, this is where I think parents

would help a university, if we find them with a false ID, they were

charged with procuring liquor by a minor or what have you, which

is nothing of a major charge. We are starting to bring forgery

charges against them or altering of government documents, which

creates a court situation, because we are getting so inundated by

these problems.

The other charges, we have had parents actually, where we

charged individuals underage with—an example I can think of is

two cases of beer. The individual was charged with possession of

alcohol by a minor. We had complaints filed against the officers

and what have you for violating the individual’s rights and the parents actually came to the university and wanted the two cases of

beer given back to their son, who was 18 years old.

So I think that is where we have a gap here, that everyone, all

three entities have to work together. But IDs are a major problem,

a major problem, and that is where it all starts, that they can get

into the establishments, they can go into the liquor stores and purchase whatever they want. I cannot blame the business. It is a

business problem also. I can tell you, I will show you some of these

IDs and I defy you to tell me that they are phonies.

Senator CARPER. Are there any best practices that you could

point us to, either States or cities or counties, where they are doing

an especially noteworthy job in this regard?

Mr. WELTY. I am familiar—and actually, a number of campuses

use student IDs that are bar-coded now for a variety of purposes,

which allows students to deposit so much money to purchase food,

those kinds of things. We are actually exploring through our council that I mentioned earlier, as a result of a request from some of

our local bar owners of allowing—essentially, they are using a

reader in their establishments which would automatically allow

them to determine whether the student is of age or not. Again, I

think that is something that is worked out best in a local community environment. But the technology, I think, does exist where

that is possible to do.

Chief NOLAN. As the Doctor said, most of it is already available.

I know the State of Connecticut’s driver’s licenses are all bar-coded

at the present time. They just have not moved forward to a point

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where an establishment can easily read this, which the technology

is available and it is really not all that expensive to get into.

So I think it has to be looked at on a national basis for not only

the alcohol problems but for other problems and something set up

where it would work nationally. But I would assume most States

have the identification process in place, it is just starting to use it.

Senator CARPER. Mr. Chairman, thanks, and again, to each of

you, thank you for your good work in this regard. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Senator Carper, thank you. Thanks for

taking the time to be here and for your interest in this problem.

I thank each of you. You have been very helpful. We have

learned a lot. I hope we have drawn some attention to the problem.

The statistics are shocking, and Dr. Reardon, thanks for having the

strength to come and make these numbers painfully real. If I had

to say in one sentence what we ought to try to be about, it is to

have a national policy that engages universities, educators, parents, students, and law enforcers to ensure that no parent has to

experience the nightmare that you have been through. Your willingness to come and talk to us about it today brings us a little bit

closer to that.

We are going to go on with these hearings and have at least one

more. There have been some references to the alcohol industry. I

want to call them in at the next hearing. It would probably be good

to have a student, maybe one who had a close call or is involved

in campus work on this subject. We are thinking of having somebody who is either from the entertainment industry or can comment on the messages that may be sent by the entertainment culture about substance abuse, including alcohol.

And then perhaps a medical professional. We had a call after I

announced these hearings in Connecticut from a doctor in the

emergency room at Yale-New Haven—a hospital, unfortunately,

that has treated a few of the students who have come in from the

universities in the area and the hospital has some opinions.

I urge each of you to think—and as I said, we are going to leave

the record of the hearing open for 2 weeks—I want to see if we can

get the Federal Government to be helpful here, to be constructive.

There have been a few interesting ideas specifically regarding more

funding for particular programs. Just be very aggressive about giving us your best ideas.

In the meantime, I thank you for your time and for all you have

contributed today. For now, we will adjourn this hearing.

[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

(39)

A P P E N D I X

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BUNNING

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think we all agree that binge drinking is unacceptable and risky behavior. The

report by the Task Force of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and

Alcoholism has some disturbing statistics.

It says that:

• 1,400 college students die each year from alcohol-related injuries;

• 2.1 million students drove under the influence of alcohol last year; and

• more than 600,000 students were assaulted by another student who had been

drinking.

Unfortunately, alcohol abuse can lead to abuse of other substances. According to

a survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at

‘‘HHS’’, underage binge drinkers were seven times more likely to use illegal drugs

than underage kids who were not binge drinkers.

That same report said that in 2000, almost 7 million children under the age of

21 were binge drinkers.

We obviously have a problem with some of our students being able to control their

behavior and knowing when to say when.

And we also have a problem with underage children having easy access to alcohol.

I don’t know if these kids are getting alcohol from older students or from going

to parties or even using fake ID’s in bars and liquor stores, but as long as kids who

shouldn’t be drinking can easily get beer and liquor then we really have little or

no control over the system.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer to solving this problem. However, getting these children back on the right track will require an effort by all of us, including parents, teachers, schools, local communities, and the students themselves.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I am hoping that they

will shed some light on what else we need to be doing to keep our young people

safe.

Thank you.

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