The best, the brightest and binge drinking

April 17, 2007

This op-ed appeared April 17 in the Orlando Sentinel.

By: Mike Seigel
Mike Seigel is a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Durham police report that the lacrosse players presented neither a special nor unique case.

While Americans join the three former Duke University lacrosse players in celebrating their exoneration last week on sexual-assault and kidnapping charges, they should be less sanguine about what the case revealed concerning the behavior of our nation’s college students.

Indeed, a careful look at the activity on the Duke campus should send chills down the spine of every parent with a child away at school.

Only 83 years old, Duke has risen to the top of the academic ladder through decades of concerted effort. For example, a Duke program identifies “gifted” fourth- through seventh-graders and offers them educational opportunities all associated with the Duke name. As a result, parents connect Duke with academic excellence years before their child decides which college to attend.

The school’s determination to compete with the likes of Princeton and Harvard has been remarkably successful: In the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, it was rated the eighth-best university in the country.

Accordingly, Duke attracts some of the nation’s best and brightest. This makes it even more alarming to learn that alcohol abuse on campus is rampant. The school reports that, in 2003, 43 percent of fraternity members, 29 percent of sorority members, 14 percent of non-fraternity men and 8 percent of sorority women engaged in binge drinking. During the 2005-06 academic year, 37 students were transported to Duke’s emergency room for alcohol poisoning. Each year, dozens of students show up at Duke’s counseling services suffering from the symptoms of alcoholism.

One Duke custom reveals much about alcohol abuse on campus — and the administration’s ambivalence toward it. Before football games, Duke students participate in tailgating. That means partying, eating and, of course, drinking outdoors. But because the Duke football team is notoriously bad, most students who participate in tailgates never bother to watch the game.

One year, after drunken behavior during tailgating was particularly outrageous, the Duke administration took action — sort of.

It did not flood tailgates with officials to crack down on excessive (and mostly illegal) drinking. Instead, it requested help from certain student groups, including the lacrosse team, to moderate tailgate conduct. The lacrosse coach’s solution was to require his team to set an example by attending the football games. His theory, apparently, was that kickoff would be a logical time for drinking to stop. Needless to say, this laughable effort failed.

By itself, excessive and underage drinking is bad enough — but it is much worse because of its consequences. According to Duke, drunkenness is a factor in incidents involving assault, property damage, injury and unwanted sex. The behavior of the Duke lacrosse team provides ample evidence to support this claim. Keeping in mind that the team was composed of about 45 players, 22 team members were disciplined in 2003-04 for misconduct involving underage possession of alcohol, public urination, providing false identification, and violation of the school’s noise policy. In 2005-06, 18 players were cited, with the offenses this time including open containers of alcohol in a car, destruction of property and holding a drinking party in a dorm room.

Like their counterparts at other schools, Duke students who really want to party move off campus, simply transferring the problem to another jurisdiction. Indeed, the lacrosse players residing off campus were well known to the Durham police. During the several years prior to the rape allegation, players were cited for 14 incidents of alcohol-related misconduct, often involving property damage.

But the bigger picture is even more alarming. Durham police report that the lacrosse players presented neither a special nor unique case — their house was not even in the top 10 with respect to neighbors’ complaints of loud parties and disorderly conduct. True to form, the most egregious behavior took place in the school’s fraternity houses.

What is a school to do?

It could, of course, get serious about policing underage and excessive drinking — for instance, by instituting real punishments at least for second offenses and notifying parents of their child’s infraction. (The full extent of the Duke lacrosse players’ alcohol-related behavior was never brought to their parents’ attention.) But serious action would be unpopular — and no school wants to risk getting a reputation for not letting students have their fun. That might, after all, hurt recruiting and cause a fall in the almighty rankings.

At the University of Florida, it took five alcohol-related student deaths in 2003-05, and a dedicated university president, for the problem to gain serious attention. The jury is still out on the success of these efforts — no doubt a lot of underage and excessive drinking still takes place in Gainesville.

But many colleges still do essentially the same as Duke has done until now — they pretend the problem doesn’t exist, and when they are forced to face it, they address it with Band-Aid solutions. This hypocrisy is not lost on our young adults — who will bear the ill effects of it for a long time to come.