Boulder – A pilot program at the University of Colorado in which parents talk to their kids about the dangers of alcohol abuse before sending them off to college was successful in reducing the amount students in the study drank their first semester.
As a result, CU officials are considering whether to offer the program materials to the parents of all incoming freshmen next year.
“The ideal would be that this becomes part of the admission process for freshmen,” said Stephen Bentley, the substance abuse program coordinator at CU’s Wardenburg student health center. “… If everything goes very well, over a period of four to five years, hopefully you’ll start to see a change in the whole culture about drinking on campus.”
Such a cultural change has been elusive at CU, which, despite numerous grants and programs over the past decade, has seen little movement in the percentage of students who binge drink.
In a 2005 survey, 71 percent of students said they had engaged in binge drinking in the previous two weeks.
From 1993 to 2005, the median rate reported by students was 58 percent.
The national average is about 50 percent, according to Harvard’s College Alcohol Study.
Robert Maust, who heads CU’s A Matter of Degree program, presented a report at the CU regents meeting Thursday showing just how tough change has been.
“We have to get better at what messages are going to work with what types of students,” Maust said later.
The parent-based program was pioneered by Robert Turrisi, a professor at Penn State University. The program gives a handbook to parents the summer before their child leaves for college. Parents then read the handbook before having a conversation with their child about the dangers of alcohol abuse.
At CU, about 90 incoming freshmen participated in the program. In their first semester, they had on average two fewer drinks per weekend than students who hadn’t participated in the program and were half as likely to engage in heavy drinking, according to Turrisi’s results.
In studies at other campuses, Turrisi said, he has found the effect carries over into the spring semester.
The program is one of several new initiatives CU has unveiled recently to fight alcohol abuse on campus, to go along with numerous programs already in place.
