Few contemporary problems seem as intractable as high-risk drinking by college students. The significance of higher education leaders taking a visible stand to prevent student alcohol abuse is obvious. Less apparent, however, is the possibility that increased attention to the problem, if talked about in the wrong way, might actually make things worse. How this can happen, and how it can be avoided, is something that college presidents and other senior administrators need to understand. Whether and how much students drink partly depend on their perceptions of campus drinking norms.
Students take in all kinds of information about what is typical or normative among their peers.
What is seen as typical can then become what is expected. Where students see lots of students using alcohol, they may feel pressure to fit in by drinking. Where they see fewer students drinking, they feel less pressure and may drink less. What is critical here is not just the actual level of alcohol consumption but students' perceptions of how much drinking is going on. Those perceptions are prone to error.