"Dude! I totally blacked out last night!" It's an excuse, a badge of superior partying skills, and a punch line all rolled into one commonly heard salutation on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday mornings. And while it can be unpleasant not to remember the night before, it's clear that it is not uncommon for Dartmouth students to have a lapse in memory due to excessive drinking.
Ask anyone on campus, and it seems that blacking out is not an uncommon occurrence, particularly for members of the Greek system. "Within guys in a fraternity, there's no stigma attached to it because it is so common. It's just another thing. I've never thought of anyone differently because they said they blacked out the night before," Gordon Silvera '08 said. An anonymous Greek senior female agrees. "The blacking out culture of Dartmouth is like the booting culture of Dartmouth -- most people involved in a certain section of campus are pretty comfortable with drinking and drinking to excess."
Alcohol and other drugs Education Coordinator Brian Bowden believes the percentage of Dartmouth students experiencing blackouts is low. "When someone is having a true blackout it's a very serious problem. It's one of the first signs of an alcohol problem," he said. He differentiates between losing consciousness, which he says may occur to a social drinker who has had one (or a few) too many drinks, and blacking out, which he says is a sign of alcohol dependency. "Many students at Dartmouth are passing out. But I would say that there is only a small percentage of students who are blacking out. Usually someone who has a blackout has a history of excessive consumption, and a high tolerance to begin with -- that's when they start to not remember things."
There may not be reason to worry about everyone you know who has blacked out yet, though. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's website, "Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers than previously assumed and should be viewed as a potential consequence of acute intoxication regardless of age or whether the drinker is clinically dependent on alcohol." The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism also reports that among a survey of college students, 51 percent reported blacking out at least once in their lives, and 40 percent had blacked out within the last year. Within two weeks prior to the survey, 9.4 percent of college students had blacked out. These results seem much more in line with the attitudes and reported behavior of our Dartmouth populous.
Regardless of whether blacking out is a sign of alcohol dependency, there's still reason for concern in the short-term, since during blackouts people are more likely to take part in unsafe acts such as vandalism, drunk driving and unprotected sex. And according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, females should be particularly wary because there is evidence they are more prone to blackout than men, even when they drink comparable amounts of alcohol.
Still, why does the information that the Alcohol and Other Drugs Education program work with deduce that most students are not blacking out, when an informal campus inquiry seems to suggest otherwise? This is particularly worrisome since Bowden is also the head of the social norms campaign, the program that prints statistics on that free nalgene you carry with you everywhere.
Maybe it's the way the data is perceived. To start off, the campaign supplies no statistics on the percentage of students who black out on campus, but it does provide quite a bit of other data. And the statistic that is most likely emblazoned on your nalgene or on a poster in your chemistry classroom is also found on the Dartmouth Web site The stats: 77 percent of Dartmouth students in the most recent poll from 2002 said that they have less than five drinks on an average Saturday night, which certainly seems to represent a campus of responsible drinkers. Another poll done in 2001 states that the average number of drinks consumed by a student on a Saturday night was 5.9, with 10.1 percent of the population claiming to drink over 10 alcoholic beverages. Taking into account that 16 percent of students categorized themselves as abstainers and 36 percent consider themselves light drinkers, that leaves about the other half of the population in an uneasy place, especially since this data comes from a program encouraging students to be aware of the social norms surrounding the Dartmouth drinking culture.
So how effective is the campaign at curbing Dartmouth students' drinking, as opposed to other schools? According to Bowden, the campaign has had mostly positive results across the country.
"The social norms campaign has been shown to decrease abuse of alcohol nationwide, and is most effective where there are few outlets for alcohol consumption," Bowden said. But when asked about its efficacy at Dartmouth, Bowden said it was not progressing as quickly as might be hoped, but this might not be a bad thing. Bowden explained, "The social norms campaign is slow to progress because Dartmouth doesn't have the zero tolerance policy of Texas Tech or the University of Oklahoma...but zero tolerance policies tend to push alcohol consumption off campus...and this is not Dartmouth's philosophy at this time. We want students not to hide when they have had too much to drink."
So we're making progress by not being shy about talking about our drinking habits, at least when we pass a buddy on the Green anyway. Still, it's encouraging that many Dartmouth students are truly concerned about the Dartmouth blacking out scene, particularly since it doesn't line up with their perceptions of the outside world. "[Blacking out] is definitely much more socially acceptable [at Dartmouth] than in the real world, and because people do it so often at Dartmouth, it becomes more socially acceptable," Melody Dai '07 said. "In what we perceive to be the real world, people don't drink to the point of blacking out two or three times a week."
Students also worry that it might be a particular problem at Dartmouth, since many agreed that their friends at other schools don't view blacking out the same way as we do. "My friends from other schools talk about blacking out like it's a major thing. Here [at Dartmouth] it's just a funny story," an anonymous Greek junior female said.
And though it may be socially acceptable, plenty of Dartmouth students are disappointed by their peers' behavior. "I don't think there's an excuse, and I don't like that people use it as a way to excuse their behavior. I don't know why anyone would want to drink to that point," Gaby Santa-Donato '09 said. Still others are simply confused. Allison Baker '09 concludes, "It seems like once you get to that point, it can't be fun anymore. Some people do it weekend after weekend and they must know how much alcohol is in their bodies. It just seems masochistic to me."
