The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story this week about a new study from sociologist Chadwick Menning. The study surveys 300 Midwestern college students and suggests that ‘dirty dancing’ and an abundance of male guests are better indicators of danger at a party than whether or not partygoers are drunk, according to the students.
Chadwick Menning, an associate professor of sociology at Ball State University, asked respondents to name signals that make women feel unsafe at a party. They cited such things as suggestive dancing and and a disproportionately high number of men. But they did not mention alcohol, Mr. Menning said.
“Drinking is considered normal at college parties, and that hasn’t changed in decades,” he said in a Ball State news release. “Students expect to drink lots of alcohol at both Greek and non-Greek parties. Yet they do look for secondary traits that may signal that there could be danger.” The study, “Unsafe at Any House?” is to be published in the October issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
Mr. Menning pointed out that women who attend parties centered on drinking put themselves at risk of sexual assault, which he said ranks as “their biggest fear, even bigger than death.” So the students’ lack of concern about alcohol is noteworthy, he said, particularly given the efforts by college administrators to educate young people about the dangers of binge drinking.
Comments 1
minnesotatiger — January 13, 2009
I served on a faculty/staff committee at Cornell that reviewed the University's efforts to effectively communicate to students the dangers of binge drinking. It was a good committee with thoughtful people and a range of perspectives, but I walked away feeling there were two fundamental problems in such communications that was very difficult to address, and that is the sense that many of the adults in the room disapproved of any level of drinking for 18- and 19-year-olds, and that most of them disapproved of any amount more than one or two drinks per evening. . . so when some of us on the committee pointed out the moralism that pervaded official communications re: alcohol, most of the committee didn't see the problem. The other was a definition of binge drinking that would probably include most habits of most college students who drink -- "more than 5 drinks in one night." But imagine the difference between these two scenarios: a) a student has a beer at dinner time (6 pm) and is out until 2 am, consuming 5 or 6 drinks total and b) a student goes to a party at 10 pm and stays till 1 am, consuming 6 drinks total. Communications about binge drinking never got down to the details that would allow college students to understand the specific concerns motivating the message. Combined, these two things led students to conclude that the University officials just "didn't get it" when it came to drinking.
The upshot is, I think it may not be that students are unconcerned about alcohol, but that they're only concerned about it when it's coupled with other danger signs. Maybe colleges -- and other organizations that tend to be in loco parentis -- should concentrate on communicating about those things in a college environment that differentiate "safe" from "unsafe" drinking, since years of experience would seem to indicate that it's a lost cause to get students to think of ALL drinking as dangerous.