Danger of Excessive Underage Drinking
Colleges all over the world struggle with maintaining excessive underage drinking that takes place on campus. While they also make sure the drinking among the group of students who are the legal age stays minimal. Society views attending college as a rite of passage to engage in inappropriate behavior such as underage drinking. The time students spend doing wrongful behavior should be redirected to studying. According to Wechsler, Lee, Nelson, and Kuo (2002), two in five students attending college take part in heavy alcohol consumption. Also, they state that numerous risk factors come along with misusing alcohol, the major risk being alcohol poisoning and change of behavior increases the chance of verbal, physical, and sexual assaults (2002). Factors that increase the use of alcohol are the need to fit in with others, the impact it has on the youth, and easy access on a college campus to obtain alcohol.
Lifestyle Management Class
Institutions should respond to uncontrolled alcohol consumption among students by establishing lifestyle management courses instructed by fellow students. This intervention will allow students to ask for nonjudgmental help from people who have experienced similar events while helping them approve their lifestyle. This intervention is intended to encourage the participants to decrease the amount of alcohol they consume. According to Barnett, Tevyaw, Fromme, Borsari, Carey, Corbin, Colby, and Monti (2004), the University of Texas provides their students with the LMC (Lifestyle Management Class) which is designed to reduce binge drinking and to express the consequences that may follow. This class gives feedback to students and consists of two-hour-long group sessions that take place once every two weeks. Students provide their own personal experiences during these meetings to show how alcohol has negatively impacted their lives. The LMC instructors are student volunteers who engage in a training program to learn how to properly assist the students. Participants were recruited through flyers, advertising around campus, and when required due to a campus violation regarding alcohol.
Results of Anti-Alcohol Classes
Having a Lifestyle Management Class presented on a college campus is exceptionally beneficial to help diminish society’s view of the “college experience.” The results of the LMC to see the improvement in the students who attended the program were measured in a post-assessment that took place six weeks after the pre-assessment, and six months later the participants completed a follow-up questionnaire (2004). The results of this experiment were very accurate to the hypotheses they conducted when first looking into this methodology. Participants reduce the alcohol they consumed dramatically by the end of this course.
Conclusion
In closing, the public health of students attending college will be much more improved if institutions establish informative programs. The nation as a whole should take a step away from the ideal and push for a change on each campus.
