After watching many movies with stereotyped views of college, most incoming freshmen expect alcohol to be influential factor in their college careers. Freshmen at the University are no exception. This year, the University joined 450 colleges and universities nationwide and required its incoming freshmen class to complete the online prevention tool AlcoholEdu.
AlcoholEdu consists of a tutorial with audio and visual presentations of slideshow-style bullet points to explain causes of drinking, effects of drinking on the body and common stereotypes about college drinking. The first three chapters occupied about two-and-a-half hours, and were followed by a survey to be completed one month later. A series of case studies about a “typical” group of friends with intricate and different attitudes about drinking complements the factual information.
Director of Student Activities Julie Thornton approved of the program and its goals.
“AlcoholEdu is intended to be preventative and educational,” Thornton said. “The program tries to give the freshmen class and-ultimately over the course of four years-all of our students the same information on alcohol, so we all have the same talking points related to alcohol.”
This educational program reflected the work of a multi-disciplinary group of University student services, professionals and staff called the University Committee on Alcohol. This committee included representatives from Residential Life, the Greek Life Office, the Office of the Dean of Students, the College Office and Health Promotion & Wellness. After the University participated in a study last year as part of the National College Health Assessment, the results showed that many students considered alcohol use one of the top 10 negative influences to academic performance.
In addition to this data, the Committee noticed that many of the University’s peer group schools like Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and Duke had been using AlcoholEdu with their own freshmen classes. Following their leads, the University introduced the program to its own class of 2009.
“We aren’t trying to stop drinking, and we would be very na‹ve to think we could do that,” Thornton said. “The program really just contributes to what we can do to help slow down or moderate the use of alcohol.”
Director of Student Health and Counseling Services Alan Glass shares Thornton’s perspective.
“The point of the thing and the hope is that over the course of time that it makes people think more about their alcohol use,” Glass said. “You look at students both before and after taking the course, and admittedly, it doesn’t have the same affect on everybody, but over the course of time, you hope that it starts to change some of the culture on drinking.”
A University of Illinois researcher concluded these very same results in a study of the effectiveness of AlcoholEdu. According to Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, Dr. Andrew F. Wall studied 23,127 students and stated that people who participated in the prevention program in 2003-2004 reported 50 percent fewer negative health, social, and academic consequences than students who had not been exposed to the program. Glass cited this study as an important reason for the University’s implementation of AlcoholEdu, as opposed to other similar programs.
Univerity students had mixed reviews as to the results of this study and the true effectiveness of AlcoholEdu.
“If you have more knowledge on a subject, you’re more likely to makeÿbetter decisions,” freshman Mysti Sky Niermann said. “But I don’t think it will make a grand impact. I really don’t.”
Freshman Aaron Sidorov concurred.
“I think they should continue offering the program,” Sidorov said. “But I don’t think it will change people’s behavior. People are going to drink, but at least they’ll know what they are doing.”
Other freshmen believed that while the program likely won’t create miracles, offering standardized information about drinking may help their class.
“I don’t know if AlcoholEdu is the best option, but there is value in continuing some sort of requirement, because some people come in here with no alcohol education,” freshman Lauren Karbach said.
Freshman Courtney LeGates agreed.
“It was definitely a good idea for Wash. U. to use the program,” LeGates said. “I did a lot of alcohol training in school, but there are probably a lot of people who did a lot less than I did.”
While most students agreed that general information about alcohol is useful for the incoming class, many saw major flaws in the program.
“I didn’t like that you couldn’t skip over things,” freshman Clare Stevens said. “I didn’t payÿattention to it at all. Then, I took the test in the end and still got a 90. I wish you could just skip things, then take the test. If you fail the test, you could go back and do the other parts.”
Besides the length of the course, many students found problems with the specific case studies included, which the program compared to the individuals’ group of friends.
“They were very stereotypical and more than on the edge of fake,” Niermann said.
Karbach also disliked these case studies.
“The studies were rather clich‚,” Karbach said. “A story about a football player who stopped drinking because his friend died from a car accident with a drunk driver was so ‘cut and dry’, this is why you should stop drinking, which is not really the whole truth.”
Lastly, Glass received a few complaints from parents of people who did not drink who did not find value in their children running the program. However, he said he believes that AlcoholEdu provides valuable information for everyone, regardless of his or her own alcohol preference.
“Alcohol is very much a part of our university culture,” Glass said. “Even if a person is an abstainer, it is guaranteed that they are going to be exposed to it, so giving them the tools they use to deal with that is a good argument for why those people should take this program.”
University students and administration have yet to see whether AlcoholEdu will make a larger impact on their own campus.
Andy Gavinski