When I picked up a copy of USA Today while on vacation over spring break, a disturbing headline caught my eye. "U.S. college drug use rising dramatically," the paper read, followed by the subtitle: "Nearly half of full-time students abuse drugs, alcohol each month, study says." The timing of the article was interesting since it came out during a week that students from Emory were partaking in higher education's largest annual bacchanalian celebration, spring break.
The study cited came from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Utilizing a survey of students and administrators at colleges as well as analyses of other studies on the subject, CASA released a study titled "Wasting the Best and the Brightest."
The findings both embarrass and frighten me. According to CASA, 49 percent (3.8 million) of full-time college students abuse illegal or prescription drugs or binge drink at least once a month.
Furthermore, 1.8 million college students (22.9 percent) meet a medical definition of addiction to either alcohol or drugs. A third of college students used marijuana over the past year. The collegiate usage rate of most other drugs also went up.
Is this what we want people to think of our generation? That we are a horde of drunks and potheads? Sure, many of our parents did similar things in college. But the evidence shows that our use of alcohol and drugs is much greater than any previous generation, even compared to the psychedelic sixties and seventies.
This is a major problem that has to be solved, both for our own future and the future of the country. The study links alcohol and drug abuse to academic problems, risky sexual behavior, crime, illness, unintentional injures and accidental deaths. Already we are losing too many bright minds to this epidemic.
College administrations are not doing enough to combat this problem. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare argues, "College presidents, deans and trustees have facilitated a college culture of alcohol and drug abuse that is linked to poor student academic performance, depression, anxiety, suicide, property damage, vandalism, fights and a host of medical problems.
"By failing to become part of the solution, these Pontius Pilate presidents and parents, deans, trustees and alumni have become part of the problem. Their acceptance of a status quo of rampant alcohol and other drug abuse puts the best and the brightest - and the nation's future - in harm's way."
Emory is no exception to this epidemic that is plaguing college students. Our school is part of the problem. Emory's policies that deal with underage drinking are lenient at best and focus on easily forgettable alcohol education rather than punishment for actions that are illegal.
Furthermore, the University basically sanctions the debauchery that takes place at our fraternities, including underage drinking, by failing to crack down on it.
CASA's study found that fraternity and sorority members are much more likely than non-members to drink (88 vs. 67 percent), binge drink (64 vs. 37 percent), drink and drive (33 vs. 21 percent), smoke (26 vs. 21 percent), use marijuana (21 vs. 16 percent) or cocaine (3 vs. 1.5 percent). This seems to indicate that Emory should be paying special attention to our Greek system in terms of drinking and substance abuse, rather than giving them free reign.
University President James W. Wagner has talked in the past about emphasizing social drinking rather than drinking to get drunk. Emory needs to create a plan to make this happen. Providing more robust non-drinking evening activities other than the poorly-funded Fridays @ 10 would be a great start in terms of a plan to reduce binge drinking and drug abuse on our campus.
Benjamin Van der Horst is a College sophomore from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.
This ran on 3/27/07.
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