UVa seeks to curb alcohol, substance abuse

By Brian McNeill

Published: July 20, 2008

The University of Virginia is escalating its efforts to discourage new students from imbibing staggering amounts of alcohol.

For the first time this summer, UVa has devoted an orientation session solely to alcohol abuse at the university.

The session, titled “UVa Students: Is Everybody Drinking?,” aims to combat the notion that the university is a place where students both work hard and party hard.

“Every year we hear about students across the country dying from alcohol poisoning,” said Susan Bruce, director of UVa’s Center for Alcohol and Substance Education. “We don’t want that to happen here.”

In addition to the new anti-drinking orientation seminar, UVa’s incoming first-year students are also being asked to complete an hour-long online course about the basic facts of alcohol.

The “alcohol-wise” course focuses on binge drinking, sexual assault, alcohol poisoning and the dynamics of how alcohol works. The class is not mandatory, Bruce said, but it is an “expectation” that students take it in the weeks leading up to the start of classes on Aug. 26.

UVa is also distributing wallet-sized cards to all first-year students with the phone number of the Yellow Cab Co., which gives students a ride home so long as they have a valid UVa ID card.

The university’s anti-alcohol outreach impressed Barbara Jones, mother of an incoming student from Potomac Falls in Loudoun County.

“It sounds like there’s a great network to educate and support the students who choose not to drink,” said Jones, who was among the parents and students attending orientation sessions last week.

Only a handful of students showed up for the “Is Everybody Drinking?” event, as UVa scheduled it during the time allotted for incoming students to register for fall classes. Around 90 people attended, with roughly 15 students and 75 parents.

Each of the session’s attendees was given a handheld clicker. Bruce asked them questions about the perceptions of drinking at UVa and they used the clickers to vote. On a large projection of a computer screen, Bruce displayed the crowd’s responses and matched their perceptions against data compiled from student surveys.

For example, Bruce asked the crowd how they would describe the level of drinking at UVa. Their choices were “Sobriety Central!” (nobody ever drinks), “Happy Hour” (mostly light drinkers), “Party Mix” (an equal mix of abstainers and heavy drinkers), and “Crazy Kegger” (everyone is drunk all day, every day).

After a few seconds, the crowd had voted. All of the students said they perceived UVa as a “Party Mix.” Four out of five parents agreed, though the rest selected “Happy Hour.”

Bruce then told the crowd that UVa student surveys indicate that 75 percent of UVa’s first-year students either do not drink at all or drink only modest amounts. A quarter of them, however, typically guzzle six or more drinks on an average weekend.

Bruce said that the session is intended to show students who choose not to drink — or at least not drink very much — that they are in the majority.

“We want them to not feel alone in their behaviors,” she said.

The 25 percent of students who are heavy drinkers, she added, can be more vocal and visible than their less booze-addled classmates. That can lead to a perception among first-year students that everyone drinks at UVa.

“It’s a misperceived norm,” she said. “If you go to a party and you see everyone drinking out of red Solo cups, you’re probably going to assume that everyone’s drinking. What you’re not seeing is that maybe some of those people are drinking water. Or maybe some of those people are just holding the same cup all night long.”

Laura Long, an 18-year-old incoming UVa student from Roanoke, said she was glad to hear that she will not be the only person not drinking at the university.

“It seems like if you want to do it, you can,” she said. “If you don’t want to, then no one will bother you about it. That makes me glad to hear because I don’t plan to drink.”

The orientation session also briefly addressed other risky behaviors, such as sex and smoking.

The vast majority of UVa’s first-year students — 79 percent — had only one or no sexual partners in the past year, Bruce said.

“You guys watch ‘The Hills’ or ‘Tila Tequila,’ but that’s not what’s going on here,” she said. “It’s not the MTV reality shows or E! shows.”

Most students also do not use tobacco products, Bruce said, with 81 percent saying they have not smoked recently.

UVa is launching a new anti-smoking campaign this fall that makes an appeal to the students’ bank accounts. The campaign’s posters read: “What’s the difference between a smoker and a non-smoker? $1,766” — or the estimated annual cost of cigarettes in Charlottesville.

“We find that the monetary perspective resonates with college kids,” Bruce said. “This is a really nice spring break trip.”