The majority of Dartmouth students drink 4 or fewer drinks when they go out." You may have seen this poster and others like it around campus -- in your dorms, in Thayer, in the gym. You may have wondered what the hell they're all about or, in the words of an ever-articulate '99 friend of mine, "What kind of crap is that?" I'm just going to try to clear a couple of things up for you guys. These posters are not part of some secret plan by the Trustees to make students look worse, nor are they an administrative attempt to turn Dartmouth into a Puritanical model of abstinence. They're part of a program called Social Norms, which may or may not sound familiar to you. It sounds very familiar to me because my internship in the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Education consists mostly of talking about this program until I want to socially norm myself off the top of Baker tower.
Here are the basics. A couple of years ago the Office of Evaluation and Research sent out a Social Survey to the entire student body that asked not only how much we drink when we go out, but also how much we think other students drink when they go out. According to the data received from this survey, Dartmouth drinking trends are pretty much on par with those of other colleges across the nation. Our perceived drinking trends, however, are grossly inaccurate -- in other words, we think our friends (or those mysterious "other students") are drinking far more than they actually are. So, you think, what if people lied on the survey? There are people in the Office of Evaluation and Research who, believe it or not, do stats for a living, and they are confident that the data from the survey is accurate. The Social Survey is internally consistent (so that if one person answered "I never drink" to one question and then later said "I drink ten beers every Friday" to another question, that data is thrown out). The survey was anonymous and asked about a variety of aspects of social life on campus, so students ostensibly would have no reason to lie about their alcohol use. Once the data is checked for accuracy, it's brought to the campus in the form of posters, forums, and presentations through the Social Norms campaign. Social Norms is based on the idea that if someone tells us the actual statistics about alcohol use, each of us will be better informed to make decisions about our own drinking habits.
Now you may be thinking to yourself, "But the Trustees are telling us all the time that we have so much problem drinking on this campus -- aren't you ignoring the people who are drinking too much?" The fact is that there is a lot of problem drinking here -- far too much, in fact. However, there are also a lot of students who are drinking responsibly. Social Norms shifts the focus from "Twenty-four percent of Dartmouth students have missed class due to drinking" to "Seventy-six percent of Dartmouth students have NOT missed class as a result of drinking." The college recognizes and has a wealth of resources to help students whose drinking habits are cause for concern. In addition to those resources, we also have statistics that can help us stop focusing on what students are doing wrong and focus for a change on what's going well, which is where Social Norms comes in. For years the media has tried to scare college kids into drinking less, and the fact is that these scare tactics just don't work. It's not about instilling fear, it's just about giving you correct information about drinking at Dartmouth.
When you hear someone mention alcohol education at Dartmouth, you may be imagining devil-horned Trustees breathing fire as they concoct a sinister plan to suck every last ounce of fun out of college. Social Norms is not the pet project of cruel administrators out to get you. It's not designed to rob you of your individuality and turn you into a carbon copy Dartmouth student; on the contrary, the idea is to give you positive, accurate information so you can make an individual, personal decision. Social Norms is simply an attempt to correct misperceptions and provide the campus with accurate messages about our drinking culture. We don't want you to stop drinking -- we just want you to think about what responsible drinking could mean for you and to realize that lots of other students are already choosing to drink responsibly. If you want to know more, or if you think I'm full of crap and you want to tell me that, please find me. Andthe next time one of your friends sees one of these posters and asks you, "What kind of crap is that?" you can respond that it's the kind of crap that's designed to actually make students look good for a change. I'll drink to that.
