The Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs is attempting to lessen the danger associated with the high-risk drinking of college students.
The University of California-Berkeley is receiving a small part of a $900,000 federal grant given to Alameda County, where the school is located. That funding comes on top of a $50,000 state grant awarded to the school, which is meant to be used by Berkeley police to help deter underage drinking at campus fraternities.
It will not be entirely clear how much of the $900,000 will be allotted to Berkeley until the end of the fiscal year, according to Cathy Kodama, the clinical health and promotion director at Berkeley.
"We are pleased that the State of California has awarded this grant to Alameda County to address the important issue of high-risk drinking among youth, including college students," she said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines a high-risk drinker as a person who has had five or more drinks on the same occasion at least once in the past 30 days.
This type of high-risk drinking garnered attention at Berkeley when junior Steve Saucedo died last March after a night of drinking. Kodama said that she is unaware of any other alcohol-related incident at Berkeley leading to the death of a student. But she said that since Saucedo's death, students have been disciplined for incidents stemming from high-risk drinking and some students left Berkeley before their alcohol problems escalated.
Kodama said she believes the rate of drinking at Berkeley is near the national average. Harvard University researchers have said that nationally about 44 percent of college students binge drink. Kodama said a college survey found very similar statistics at Berkeley with 45 percent of students there involved in high-risk drinking at lease one or two times in the spring of 2003.
But Berkeley is not alone. High-risk drinking is a problem on most campuses, and Brown is no exception, said Frances Mantak, health education director at Brown. And though Brown hasn't recently received federal money to fight high-risk drinking, administrators are trying to keep students safer when they go to parties.
Mantak cited studies set up by Nancy Barnett, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown, as among the programs designed to curb the amount of high-risk drinking.
Mantak said that the study tracks the trends of student drinking, analyzes what makes intervention such as the Emergency Medical Services successful and why students drink or opt not to drink.
A 2001 Harvard alcohol study indicated that 72 percent of Brown students describe themselves as abstainers, infrequent drinkers or light drinkers. The study also shows that 82 percent of students who do drink have between one and four drinks when they go out.
Mantak said her department supports non-alcoholic projects, such as the Brown University Relaxation Project, Salsa-dancing events, belly dancing and yoga in an effort to reduce stress and provide alternatives to alcohol.
She recommended MyStudentBody.com, a health information Web site directed at college students, as a confidential resource for students to use.
