Did you know that mental blackouts result from trauma to the hippocampus in the brain?
Following in the footsteps of their upperclass predecessors, members of the Class of 2011 learned this fun fact, along with countless others, as they fulfilled their summer-before-college rite of passage and began AlcoholEdu, the three-hour online course that teaches freshmen about drinking and personal safety. Mandatory for freshmen at Dartmouth since 2002, AlcoholEdu coached hundreds of thousands of American college students just this past year alone on the hazards of alcohol consumption.
The First-Year Office should be lauded for its understanding that underage drinking does happen at the Big Green and that ensuring students' health matters above all. Just like at all colleges across the country (save for Brigham Young University), the beer flows at Dartmouth like the Connecticut River. Faced with the choice to drink, kids must be savvy on how to drink safely. However, the current approach to promote this necessary awareness remains flawed.
For the overwhelming majority of incoming first-years, AlcoholEdu, which the 'schmen will complete late next month, is superfluous to their preexisting teenage know-how. From DARE to the driver's license test to high school health class, freshmen have been inundated with classroom instruction on alcohol safety throughout their lives. And in all honesty, freshmen have probably already discovered their personal limits when it comes to "hitting the bottle." Contrary to the squeaky clean adolescent world depicted in High School Musical, a whopping 74 percent of high school kids have dabbled in booze, according to a 2005 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey. Et tu, Zac Efron?
To be fair, AlcoholEdu does offer new information to its often less-than-eager pupils. Unfortunately, these are mostly unnecessary facts on the scientific technicalities of drinking -- tidbits that do not matter in the real world. "AlcoholEdu was mostly redundant [from what I knew already] and I don't think learning about which parts of the brain are affected by alcohol and what they are supposed to do makes anyone drink more responsibly," Chelsea Liddell '11 told me. Rebecca Hellerman '11 agreed: "AlcoholEdu was a waste of time. It did not make me a safer drinker."
Just because hundreds of colleges mandate AlcoholEdu for their freshmen does not mean that Dartmouth must give into peer pressure and follow suit. Ironically, isn't this what AlcoholEdu preaches?
Just in case freshmen immediately forgot the teachings of AlcoholEdu, the College offered another (non-mandatory) educational presentation during orientation: David Hellstrom's "The Real Buzz: The Truth and Lies About Campus Alcohol." Year after year, this speech in Spaulding Auditorium has been hailed as more realistic and entertaining than its dry and impersonal Internet-based counterpart. Strangely, between AlcoholEdu and the O-week talk, the more effective learning tool of the two is the optional one.
For kids learning about alcohol for the first time or simply receiving a quick refresher, the succinct Hellstrom lecture alone provided all the necessary instruction on how to keep safe on Webster Avenue. "The presentation pretty much covered the same material as AlcoholEdu, which makes me wonder why AlcoholEdu took so long to get the same points," Emily Chang '11 told me. Simply put, the Orientation presentation makes AlcoholEdu just plain dispensable.
And with students hearing the same shpiel on alcohol five times over, the overkill could push wary freshmen to tune out. However well-intentioned, too much alcohol education can be counterproductive. Uninterested students are able to exploit the loopholes in the current system and easily shirk both tools. "Those people who want to drink a lot are going to do so anyway. They are also the people who skipped out on the Hellstrom talk or just clicked through AlcoholEdu without listening, so I doubt the alcohol education programs helped very much," Liddell bluntly put it. Only reform to the College's approach to alcohol education will plug these gaping holes.
All students coming into Dartmouth should receive practical alcohol education, yet the First-Year Office must target its efforts more wisely. Less is more. By requiring all 'schmen to attend the worthwhile orientation presentation while suspending the superfluous and monotonous AlcoholEdu, the College can more effectively achieve its vital goal of promoting alcohol safety among students. And I'll drink to that.