Defining the Debate

Henry Wechsler's name is synonymous with college drinking.

In 1993--four years before Scott Krueger drank himself to death at an MIT fraternity--the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researcher's landmark College Alcohol Study showed binge drinking on college campuses was far more extensive than anyone believed and initiated a nationwide crackdown on student binge drinking.

Wechsler demonstrated that a host of "secondary effects"--including date rape, violence, and poor academic performance--followed as a result of drinking to excess.

Wechsler hit the media circuit--morning news shows, newspaper opinion pages, interviews and more--trying to convince U.S. colleges and the public at large that they had become desensitized to a very real problem on college campuses.

"Our society has taken alcohol as a rite of passage," Wechsler says. "It's like living next to a fish factory--after a while you don't smell it any more."

Wechsler was the first researcher in the nation to examine college binge drinking, and his data and theories remain at the forefront of the national debate.

Wechsler's ongoing national studies of student alcohol use are unmatched in their scope. For each study, Wechsler surveys more than 15,000 students at about 130 colleges, providing some of the most authoritative statistics on the magnitude of college drinking.

However, a core group of researchers and college administrators attack both the accuracy of Wechsler's studies and the thinking that underlies them.

They say Wechsler's definition of binge drinking is inherently flawed and classifies too many students as problem drinkers.

In an even more serious charge, they say Wechsler's strategy of emphasizing the extent of drinking on college campuses has backfired. Instead of reducing the level of college drinking, they say, Wechsler has convinced students that bingeing is socially acceptable and has actually increased the number of students who drink to excess.

In The Public Eye

National media organizations have consistently leapt on Wechsler's findings as evidence of a widespread culture of self-destruction on college campuses, and Wechsler has been happy to oblige them with interviews and press releases.

In the past seven years, Wechsler has appeared on "Nightline," "20/20," "Good Morning America," and the "NBC Morning Show." Garry Trudeau wrote about him in his "Doonesbury" comic strip, and Jay Leno quipped that it "took a Harvard researcher to find that college students drink."

In part because of his staggering statistics--his data shows that almost half of college students binge drink--Wechsler has been remarkably effective at stimulating a national discussion about college alcohol abuse.

How Much Is Too Much?

Despite the widespread publicity of his views, Wechsler's critics charge that his definition of binge drinking--five drinks for a man and four for a woman--is inherently flawed.

They say it has no scientific basis, fails to account for a significant number of other factors that influence the physiological effects of alcohol use, and classifies too many students as problem drinkers.

They say that by employing his five/four definition of binge drinking, Wechsler has co-opted a rhetorically powerful phrase, redefined it too broadly, and used the results to scare the press and the general public about drinking on college campuses.

Wechsler says binge drinking is not the same thing as getting drunk. While the latter relies on a series of factors--including a person's weight, natural tolerance and the amount of time it takes them to consume alcohol--binge drinking, by Wechsler's definition, is a function only of the number of drinks a person consumes.

In fact, Wechsler says it is possible, although unusual, for someone to binge drink but not become drunk.

"[The five/four line] is not an attempt to say that people are legally intoxicated," he says.

Wechsler's definition of binge drinking has made some people uneasy.

"With the term 'binge drinking,' factors such as weight and time consumed are not taken into consideration," says H. Wesley Perkins, a researcher at Hobart University. "If we simply use the five/four measure, we find that a large percentage of people who fall into that category aren't a problem. Why are we contributing to the notion that 40 percent of students are problem drinkers?"

Because of the highly charged connotation of the term "binge drinking," many administrators and researchers have simply decided not to use it.

Kimberley A. Timpf, assistant dean for alcohol and drug education at Boston College, prefers to describe students who drink as either "low risk" or "high risk."

"The term bingeing has traditionally applied to those with serious substance problems," she says. "It doesn't equate appropriately with what most college students are doing."

Wechsler says semantics do not matter.

"People are spending too much time worrying about the word and not enough time worrying about the problem," he says.

What is Socially Normal?

Despite Wechsler's campaigns to publicize the prevalence of heavy drinking on college campuses, bingeing among the nation's students has actually gone up.

Since Wechsler's first study, students have become increasingly polarized in their drinking habits. College campuses have seen fewer moderate drinkers and larger numbers of heavy bingers and abstainers.

As a result, some researchers, funded by hefty government checks and donations from brewing companies like Anheuser-Busch, have pushed for a "social norms" approach emphasizing the prevalence of moderate drinking among students, with the hope of combatting peer pressure to drink heavily.

"We spend so much time telling students about the 25 or 30 percent who are heavy drinkers, but we never tell them that two-thirds of the student population is not engaged in such behavior," Perkins says. "Binge drinking is partially a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students end up drinking at higher levels because that's what they think their peers are doing."

Perkins cites his own Hobart College, in addition to the University of Arizona, the University of Missouri and the University of Virginia (UVA), among others, as campuses where social norms strategies have been successful.

"Each of these colleges started with different drinking rates and witnessed double-digit reduction rates after just a few years," Perkins says. "National drinking patterns have flatlined, but our program has seen substantial drops in high-risk drinking rates."

H. William DeJong, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention in Newton, Mass., is leading the charge for social norms research. Initial results from his study, funded with a $4 million grant from the Department of Education, showed that students do misperceive drinking among their peers. The study has found that students consume an average of 3.35 drinks when they party, but believe that their peers have 6.54 drinks.

The program has had particular success at UVA, where 18 students died in alcohol-related incidents between 1990 and 1998. Now, the administration posts signs telling students most of their peers who drink do so in moderation.

"Social norms takes less of a punitive approach," says James C. Turner, the director of UVA's student health department. "It gives healthy, normal messages."

This judgment-free approach to college drinking makes it difficult for administrators to maintain strong policies against underage drinking--policies which some experts feel are counterproductive.

Anthony Smulders, an expert on public health at Loyola Marymount University, says he sees the current drinking age as one of the causes of excessive drinking on college campuses.

"If students are not allowed to drink under the age of 21, how can they be expected to know how to drink responsibly when they do turn 21?" he asks.

Saying No To "Madison Avenue"

Wechsler rejects the theories behind social norms initiatives.

He says not enough data exists to support the claim that promoting moderate drinking will solve the problem--he calls it the "Madison Avenue" approach--all style, little substance.

"There's a large problem, and to say there isn't is wrong," he says. "It lets colleges off the hook."

Despite its success at other schools, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 says Harvard has not explored social norms initiatives and has no plans to do so in the future.

"Things that might work in one place might not work in another," he says. "We haven't had any real discussions."