Colleges can’t mix with alcohol

William Durden, president of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, received an irate e-mail from a parent warning that the institution was gaining a reputation as the place where “fun dies.”

The e-mail urged Durden to relax the rules on students, to “loosen up and let them have fun.”

“Fun, in case you didn’t know it, is alcohol,” Durden explained later.

The e-mail encapsulates a dilemma facing college and university presidents: They are trying to respond to growing public concern about binge drinking on campuses while also dealing with a cultural acceptance, even encouragement, of underage drinking.

On one occasion, Durden recalled, he discovered parents who were moving their freshman into a dormitory equipped with a case of Scotch. It took heavy persuasion to get the parents to understand that the Scotch couldn’t stay.

Such conflicting messages on alcohol coupled with blatant disregard for laws against underage drinking led Durden to become one of the signers of the controversial Amethyst Initiative. Maintaining that the 21-year-old drinking age set in 1984 is a failure, 134 chancellors and college presidents signed a pact urging public debate over the effects of the law.

The Amethyst Initiative has drawn criticism for reopening a question that many —- especially researchers who link the 21-year-old drinking age with fewer roadway deaths —- believe is long settled.

But Durden argues that colleges, which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on alcohol prevention and enforcement, are the ideal settings for a debate. “If colleges can’t handle discussions about that which will kill you, we’ve failed,” he says.

Legally, colleges are in a bind. They can’t promote responsible drinking among underage students because it’s a crime. If schools engage undergraduates in conversations about how to drink responsibly, only to have a student get drunk and die, the family might have grounds to sue.

Earlier this month, Durden joined Emory University administrator Carolyn Livingston on an Atlanta panel on binge drinking. Both testified to the headaches that binging causes on their campuses. Neither had easy solutions to student behavior that’s both widespread and dangerous.

According to alcohol surveys and government data, 1,700 college students die in alcohol-related accidents each year and 599,000 suffer injuries because of drinking. Alcohol is reported as a factor in 97,000 sexual assaults and date rapes.

Durden and Livingston said most sexual assaults reported at their schools involve alcohol. Between 40 and 45 Emory students end up in the hospital annually with alcohol poisoning, Livingston said.

On Facebook, college students routinely post photos of themselves drinking and drunk. (At Emory, lapses by students already on notice for alcohol violations are often discovered via Facebook, says Livingston. “They tell us, ‘I don’t really drink,’ and we say, ‘Well, look at this picture we pulled off Facebook.’ ”)

And even though freshmen increasingly arrive at college already hard-core boozers, some parents expect colleges to fix the problem, thrusting schools into yet another non-germane role, that of therapeutic agencies. At Emory, Livingston said, students don’t want to go outside of the campus to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. They want meetings specific to campus.

Is it reasonable for parents to expect universities to offer rehab, along with coffee bars, climbing walls and private bathrooms, none of which have anything to do with higher education?

Durden recalled a piece of advice that the founder of Dickinson College imparted to school trustees in 1783.

Dr. Benjamin Rush told trustees that students ought to live with their families, warning, “Do not house students on the campus. They will turn to vice.”

That prediction proved all too true, as any college president today will verify.

mdowney@ajc.com