Although rampant alcohol consumption has become a stereotype commonly associated with typical college life, a growing number of teetotaling students nationwide are challenging those perceptions.
Alexa Kanbergs, a peer health educator for the University Health Center, is part of a growing number of students choosing to abstain from alcohol to avoid the health risks and potentially dangerous actions associated with drinking.
“When drinking, you’re just hurting yourself, so I feel like you’re backtracking in that sort of sense,” Kanbergs said. “There’s also so much risk associated with drinking when you’re under 21; MIPs (Minor in Possession) are so expensive and other sort of alcohol-related risks such as drinking and driving is just not worth it.”
According to a recent survey done by Outside the Classroom Inc., a nationwide alcohol education and prevention program, Kanbergs is not alone. Brandon Busteed, founder and CEO of Outside the Classroom, Inc., said 62 percent of nearly 500,000 incoming freshman college students randomly surveyed nationwide reported they had not had a drink during the two weeks prior to their first semester of college, which is a marked increase from 38 percent in 2006. Busteed said these results are very promising, because he speculates that “this trend is probably going to continue for several years.”
Outside the Classroom, Inc., did not provide data for students’ drinking habits after entering college.
Although no concrete reasons have been established to account for the gradual increase of incoming teetotaling college students, Busteed said a variety of factors may influence students not to drink. Those include a rise in the amount of students who perceive college as a place of personal and intellectual growth and an increased amount of emphasis placed on the value of education due to the recession.
“More students are saying in other surveys that they are looking at college as a place where they’re going to develop a meaningful philosophy of life,” Busteed said. “I certainly believe that is connected with the idea that less students are coming to college as drinkers, because if they’re more serious about how they perform in college, then drinking is just going to be one of those things that gets in the way of their goals and pursuits.
“A lot of other people have also speculated that students and parents are making more sacrifices, because the economy has been so difficult over the past several years, which has motivated students to take their studies much more seriously.”
Busteed also said students reported that the limited privacy and watchdog function of social networking websites have also modified their behaviors, because the fear of getting caught or judged is too great.
“They don’t want to have photos of them doing stupid stuff when their employers that they’re trying to get jobs with go and look at their Facebook profile and see someone doing a keg stand,” Busteed said. “That’s not the kind of thing that will land you a job. Also, the knowledge that Facebook is such a public thing now, where your mother and your grandmother on Facebook, is another theory as to why some of the students may be actively trying to monitor and modify their behaviors.”
In addition, a University-wide survey seems to support the assertion of students drinking less. According to the University’s National College Health Assessment, which is administered by the University in conjunction with the American College Health Association every three years, 23.1 percent of all University students reported they did not consume alcohol over the past 30 days. However, the survey also noted that 1.9 percent of those students reported they abstained from alcohol during that same period.
“When we look at the perceptions, students generally way overestimate how much students drink,” said Paula Staight, health center director of health promotion. “Most of our students do drink responsibly, if they choose to drink; it’s a minority of those students that drink to excess.”
To combat the student consumption of alcohol, Sheryl Eyster, University associate dean of students, said the Peer Health Education program conducts a wide variety of presentations for freshmen during IntroDUCKtion, and with students in residence halls, fraternities and sororities.
“Being a peer health educator and being exposed through our class to everything you could ever want to know about alcohol does to your system and how your body processes, it really keeps me responsible and motivates me to be careful about what I put in my body and be conscious how much I drink, when I do drink,” said Hannah Dischinger, a peer health educator. “I think it’s our goal as peer health educators to share that knowledge with everyone, so they can make informed decisions and be safe, if they do choose to drink.”