What has been done to reduce alcohol abuse on college campuses and has it been effective?

What has been done to reduce alcohol abuse on college campuses?
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Introduction
Education researchers and administrators have cited alcohol abuse as a significant challenge plaguing college campuses. As a result, they have attempted to develop numerous measures including formulations of alcohol policies such as setting a minimum legal drinking age, decreasing access to the alcohol, and social norming to counter the high-risks associated with alcohol abuse. They have also developed prevention and intervention programs at an individual, school, and community level as to prevent and delay the onset of alcohol abuse. Where else most of the policies and programs that are theory driven and address social norms surrounding alcohol abuse have been effective, some have shown little effectiveness, and consequently, the prevalence of alcohol abuse in college campuses stand at a high degree.
What has been done to reduce alcohol abuse on college campuses?
To reduce alcohol abuse, the government and most of the colleges have implemented the minimum legal drinking age policy. The policy emphasizes the minimum age that students should attain to be allowed to consume alcohol. In the United States, the current minimum legal drinking age is 21. The age limit policy has been effective in minimizing alcohol consumption, alcohol-related violence, and also protects the youths from long-term consequences that result from alcohol abuse such as drug dependence (Dejong and Blanchette 2014).

However, since a large population of the college students is aged below 21, the high rate of alcohol consumption in colleges depicts that the implementation of the age limit policy has little significance in controlling alcohol abuse in campuses. The policy mainly faces the ramification in a college setting as the under-aged students often co-mingle with students within the legal drinking age. Thus, college administrators are left with two choices of either enforcing alternative means of controlling the practice within the campus or ignore the underage drinking that is experienced in their vicinity. To increase the effectiveness of the legal drinking age policy, colleges such as Wisconsin University consider lowering the age as a legal right. They believe that restricting the students under the age of 21 from drinking in bars causes them to drink irresponsibly and thus lowering the drinking age would diminish the thrill of lawbreaking to get a drink.
Colleges have also used media campaigns and advocacy, and counter-advertising to discourage binge drinking in college campuses. The media campaign utilizes print media as well as social media, and broadcast media to create awareness of underage drinking in the college sphere and its environs. Councilors and professional are also important tools in the media campaign against alcohol abuse as they provide the knowledge and skills required for the campaign. In a college setting, the expected results from media campaign include a reduction in underage drinking, a reduction in excessive alcohol consumption, and an increase in adult awareness about binge drinking among underage students. Using media campaign to address alcohol abuse in campuses has been effective as particularly when coupled with enforcement efforts as it involves delivering the message directly to the alcohol user. On the other hand, some campuses utilize counter-advertising to change the attitudes of the students towards excessive alcohol consumption. Vicary and Karshin (2002) suggest that beer advertising in schools, exposure to alcoholic ads, and alcohol-related messages are the second largest influencers of alcohol drinking in colleges. Thus, by counter-advertising, college administrators manage to counterbalance the effects of alcohol advertising and alcohol-related problems. The effectiveness of counter-advertising alcohol has been explained in previous reviews using the elaboration likelihood model. The model suggests two routes that can be employed in charging the attitudes towards alcohol. The central route involves the use of high-level relevant thinking while the peripheral route involves effortless reasoning. When media campaign and counter-advertising are coupled, they become a significant tool that has been employed by college campuses to reduce alcohol abuse.
The use of social norms approaches has also been effective in addressing alcohol abuse in colleges. Norms are social facts that frame the perceptions and also influence the behavioral choices of a member of society (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2002). In social science, the phrase is used to describe either a set of shared attitudes and expectations or the most common behavior within a social group. In colleges, peers tend to have a strong influence on students norms thus when their norms seem to encourage immoderate drinking, their alcohol consumption increases. Consequently, when their consumption is high, the students around them believe that they have more freedom to drink than they do. By using social norms strategies, institutions have attempted to dispel such beliefs by conveying the reality of what student think about alcohol consumption. Ideally, the use of social norms strategy provides the students with positive messages which alter their thoughts and behaviors. To effectively implement the social norm strategy, orientations, lecture lessons, student newspaper ads, and public venues are used to publicize data regarding drinking norms. The activities clarify the student’s misperceptions related to alcohol abuse. Although some researchers suggest that using social norm campaign and strategies to reduce alcohol consumption in colleges produce conflicting results, their overall effectiveness cannot be ignored.
The government and college administration has also used policies to limit the sale, possession, provision, and the use alcohol and also enforced penalties to individuals who violate the policies. These policies are considered to be the cornerstone of college campuses efforts to prevent alcohol abuse and dependence and create a safer learning environment. For instance, the Drug-Free schools and communities Act authorizes the school administration to enact and implement policies as to prevent illegal use, sale, possession, and distribution of illicit substances including alcohol by students or employees. A survey by Sharma (1994) suggested that almost 97% of colleges have a set of written policies that address the issue of alcohol abuse thereby making the policies the most convenient means of controlling alcoholism in schools. On the other hand, the federal government provides that for the high education institutions to receive the federal financial assistance they must annually define their standards of conduct that proscribes illegal alcohol and drug-related behavior. The policies also cover other behaviors that arise from alcohol abuse including endangerment of the health and safety of other students, vandalism, disruptive behavior, drunk driving, and physical assault. Apart from the policies specific to illegal alcohol consumption, college campuses also develop policies that govern the terms of sale and use in the campus environment for those above the permitted age of 21. For instance the school can specify where drinking or sale is permitted. Although not all the sets of policies are effective in all institutions, they stand as the most effective methods that have been used by the government and college campuses to address alcohol abuse.
Parental notification has emerged as a promising strategy in the war against alcohol abuse among college students. Studies indicate that the parents significantly influence the attitudes and behaviors of college students. Furthermore, the studies show that there exists a direct relationship between the drinking habits of a student and the drinking patterns of their families. For instance, a survey by Li-Tzy et al. (2007) showed that 8% of full-time college students were alcohol dependent while only 3% of the part-time students were regular alcohol consumers. The trend of the results can be related to parental communication and monitoring. Part-Time College students are more likely to communicate with their parents on alcohol abuse issues as compared to full-time students and thus do not drink frequently. Furthermore, the policy of involving parents in health and safety of their children in college has allowed most of the parents to get involved in alcohol and substance abuse problems before serious problems occur. The parental notification can thus be considered to be a proactive step in fighting alcohol abuse in campuses as even the parents can provide important information to the school staff that can then use the information to help the alcoholic students. Sometimes, the parental notification strategy can involve sanctions such as withdrawal of tuition and housing support when the school discovers that the parent is not supportive of their alcoholic students. However, the strategy faces a major challenge as the Federal Education Right, and Privacy policy does not allow the parents to get information directly from the educational records if they have attained the age of 18.
Recovery programs, Intervention programs, and campus-community collaborative strategies have also expanded their scope from regulating clinical alcoholism to limiting alcohol abuse on college campuses. Recovery programs are developed to help students already drained in alcohol dependence. Misch (2009) suggests that when recovering student requires a set of guidelines to enable them to confront the virtual environment developed when they quite the alcohol consumption. Intervention programs, on the other hand, are tools directed at the entire society but mostly used to address alcohol abuse among under-aged campus students. Currently, the implementation of the intervention programs has been enhanced by the use of web-based programs and social media messaging. On the other hand, campus-community collaborative strategies have emerged as promising methods of countering alcohol abuse in colleges. Since colleges do not exist in isolation from external community, the strategies create a partnership between the campus community and the local community which include the police, liquor control board, government officials, and religious leaders. Thus, by combining the intervention programs and campus-community, collaborative strategies colleges have managed to create alcohol abuse awareness as well as limit the alcohol abuse and related problems.
Conclusion
Alcohol consumption in campus colleges remains to be a significant challenge and a health concern to the public. As a result, college management in association with the government has developed and implemented numerous measures as to counter the challenge. The measures include limiting the legal drinking age, use of media campaigns and advocacy, and counter-advertising, and use of parental notification strategies. Policies that limit the sale, possession, provision, and the use alcohol, as well as intervention programs and campus-community collaborative strategies, have also been used in the war against alcohol abuse on college campuses. Although some of the strategies have emerged as propitious, some have faced several challenges making them ineffective and thereby unreliable.

References
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DeJong, W., & Blanchette, J. (January 01, 2014). Case Closed: Research Evidence on the Positive Public Health Impact of the Age 21 Minimum Legal Drinking Age in the United States. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs Supplement-, 17, 108-115.Bottom of Form
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Misch, D. A. M. D. (January 01, 2009). On-Campus Programs to Support College Students in Recovery. Journal of American College Health, 58, 3, 279-280.
National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). (2002). How to reduce high-risk college drinking: Use proven strategies, fill research gaps: final report of the Panel on Prevention and Treatment. Bethesda, Md.: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Advisory Council, Task Force on College Drinking.
Sharma, S. (October 01, 1994). A Survey of Current College Alcohol Abuse Programmes, Attitudes, and Training Needs. Management Research News, 17, 29-38.
Vicary, J. R., & Karshin, C. M. (January 01, 2002). College Alcohol Abuse: A Review of the Problems, Issues, and Prevention Approaches. Journal of Primary Prevention, 22, 299-331.
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