| NATIONAL
STUDY SHOWS PARENTAL NOTIFICATION AN EFFECTIVE DETERRENT
TO UNDERAGE DRINKING
BOWLING GREEN, O.--In the ongoing
national attempt to reduce drinking by underage students
on college campuses, one thing has been shown to be effective:
parental notification of students’ drinking offenses,
even on the first offense.
A national study of the effects
of the policy–the first of its kind–has been
conducted by faculty at Bowling Green State University,
widely known for its higher education administration and
college student personnel programs.
A total of 189 judicial administrators
participated in the study, which was conducted by Dr.
Donald Gehring, chair of the higher education administration
program, Dr. Carolyn Palmer, a professor in the college
student personnel program, and a team of BGSU graduate
students.
The findings are to be published
in the Forum of the National Association of Student Personnel
Administrators.
The results show that more than
half of the responding institutions report a "slight
or significant reduction in the number of alcohol violations
as a result of having a parental notification policy and
that parents were very supportive."
Not only have the number of alcohol
violations gone down, Gehring said, but also the number
of total incidents, which include vandalism and other
alcohol-related offenses.
The Family Education Rights and
Privacy Act was amended by Congress in 1998 to allow all
parents to be informed when their under-21-year-old children
had committed an alcohol or drug offense. Before that,
colleges and universities only had the right to notify
parents whose children were financially dependent. The
BGSU study shows that as of February 2000, 82 percent
of the participating institutions either had a parental-notification
policy or practice, or were seriously considering implementing
one this fall (2000).
"It means we’re including
parents in a partnership to help their children,"
Gehring said.
This partnership between parents
and the University addresses the problem of alcohol consumption
in two ways, he said. Rather than merely having the parents
take punitive action such as withholding use of a car
from their children, the consequences on campus tend to
be developmentally appropriate, Gehring said. At BGSU,
for example, alcohol offenders will most often be referred
to the Wellness Connection at the Student Health Center
for alcohol counseling or be required to participate in
a specific program.
And the best way to get the information
about University policy to students is through their peers,
he said, and not through printed material or lectures
from faculty or staff.
"A national study showed that
less than 1 percent read printed information about alcohol
and drugs that federal laws require institutions to provide.
Peer education programs clearly work the best," he
said, adding that athletic coaches also seem to have a
high degree of influence over student-athletes.
Increased training of residence-hall
advisers is an important tool to get the word out to students
that their parents can and will be notified if they violate
University alcohol policy, even if they are financially
independent.
Other federally mandated programs
have not been shown to be effective, Gehring said. The
Campus Security Act enacted in 1990, for example, also
requires institutions to publish information concerning
drug and alcohol laws and the effects of those substances,
but it has not been a deterrent to student drinking. The
reason for the failure is perhaps, as the above-mentioned
study showed, students by and large do not read printed
materials, or, if they do read them, do not give them
the same credence as information they receive from their
peers.
Similarly, the 1989 Drug Free Schools
and Communities Act Amendments of 1989, which again mandated
that specific written information be provided to students,
has been shown in two national studies to have no effect
on student knowledge or behavior. One of those studies
was conducted by Palmer and Gehring, along with V. Guthrie,
a graduate student, in 1992. (Posted 11/14/00)
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