A recent survey says binge drinking is decreasing on campus. The University has earned a 2003 Ohio Exemplary Prevention Program Award, given for the outstanding anti-drinking programming on a college campus. Traditionally, the average number of University students who participate in high-risk drinking has been higher than the 45 percent national average, but the situation is changing, thanks to the social norming program, which has brought the University average down.

“Every two years we do a measurement and it shows a decrease of high-risk drinking and some behaviors associated with it,” said Terry L. Rentner, an associate professor of journalism and one of the program’s organizers. “There is an increase in the number of students who never used alcohol in the last 30 days.”

The core of the program lies in bridging the gap between the perception and reality– meaning students tend to overestimate what their peers are doing. And if you correct that misperception, then students will not buy into that pattern behavior when they get to campus.

“I ask high school students, and I’ve done a lot of Ohio high schools, how much they think the typical college student drinks, and they think that 98 percent of college students binge drink. That means that every time they drink, they drink five or more drinks,” Rentner said. “The reality is that 44 percent of the students do that. What I try to do at the high school level is I go back and correct that misperception by simply giving them the facts.”

The public relations campaign includes peer education programmers, posters, fliers, table tents and concentrates primarily on freshmen, members of the Greek system and athletes.

“The average nationwide percent of binge drinking among college students is around 45 percent, but ours is a little bit higher, at 59.5,” Rentner said. “But the point is, it has been a lot higher and it is actually coming down.”

“If you look at 2000 and 2002 numbers we have improved,” Barbara Hoffman, Health Promotions Coordinator, said. “But if you compare nationally, we still have a ways to go yet.”

There are a lot of factors behind drinking on our campus. Rentner thinks that a residential campus is more likely to have high-risk drinking. Another reason could be that historically, the University has had an image of being a party school.

“One of the problems we may not have as much control over though are the students who come to us from the high school,” Hoffman said. “And many of them have engaged in the high-risk drinking before they even got here. So somehow, the University has to network with high schools and help them in campaigns as well to reduce high-risk drinking.”

Campaigners say that it will take time to change the behavior, but, with the help of programs like social norming, the process should continue to make progress.

“Over the last six years we’ve seen a steady decrease in high risk dinking,” Rentner said. “We know we are on the right road.” Apart from social norming, promoters try to give students more alternatives, like the Big Playground, which was started about five years ago and will also be held this year. The Department of Education recognized the University’s efforts and places it as one of the top seven programmers in the country.

“We need to gain more funding, to do more social norm programming,” Rentner said. “We have one right now from the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, and we have had grants since 1997. We will always be able to find some funding, but certainly additional large funding would be useful.” Rentner began her research in the area of social norming and looking at perception versus reality in the early 1990s.

“My contribution is that, first, I’m teaching the public relation discipline, and I’m able to develop an effective campaign,” Rentner said. “Two, I segmented the audiences; we have got to see at different high-risk groups. We correct misperception. You always hear the same, ‘Everybody is at the bars on Thursday night.’ Think about that — are 18,000 people really at the bar? No, it is the perception that everyone is at the bar.”

The next point in the campaign will be smoking, because according to some studies, there is a correlation between smoking and drinking.