The University’s alcohol task force received its first glimpse Thursday of the freshman survey results collected by the AlcoholEdu survey earlier this fall.

The University had a higher percentage of respondents than the national average who binge drink and drink problematically, called double binge drinking, a higher percentage of respondents who drink in bars, restaurants, and fraternity and sorority houses and a lower percentage of respondents who abstain from drinking. The University mandated the survey and alcohol education course to all incoming students under the age of 22 starting in August.

No other data was available at the meeting.

Brandon Busteed, CEO of Outside the Classroom, Inc., which produces AlcoholEdu, presented the University’s data to the members of the task force at their meeting and also showed them a chart outlining the effectiveness of programs at other schools that aim to reduce binge drinking.

Busteed said there should be a focus not on treating individual cases, but rather on treating a community. He said that in a survey of 25 college campuses there was a lot of student support to curbing binge drinking.

“There is a silent majority of students out there that are indeed going to be supportive of the moves that this task force makes on policies and enforcement,” Busteed said. “Unfortunately, you’re going to hear about the handful of students who are unhappy with those policies than those who are supportive of it. But I want to give you some comfort that this is a very real trend out there.”

Busteed said that while he couldn’t recommend specific policy implementations for the University, he presented a chart showing the cost versus the effectiveness of campus initiatives nationally. He said programs like Safe Ride and bringing anti-alcohol speakers to campus have not been found to reduce high-risk drinking.

“Now if you are bringing campus speakers for entertainment, fine by me,” Busteed said. “But if you’re bringing campus speakers with the idea that’s a plan to reduce high-risk drinking on campus, there currently is nothing to support that.”

Emily Williams, Overland Park graduate student and member of the alcohol task force, said she thought it was good that an organization looked at the data of the effectiveness of programs.

“When it comes to working with students, it’s kind of a fluid environment,” Williams said. “It’s a trial and error process.”

Marlesa Roney, vice provost for student success and chairwoman of the alcohol task force, said she wanted to get the data to the community to show that more underage students are drinking at bars than at other places.

“That might help begin to talk more and more about what can we do to reduce the lack of carding,” Roney said. “If we could begin cracking down on that, that could really help us out.”

On Wednesday night’s ‘no’ vote in the alcohol subcommittee of the student rights standing committee in Student Senate on a policy that would allow senior staff members in Student Housing easier access to rooms if they suspected alcohol policy violations, Roney said students on both sides of the issue did a good job in laying out their arguments and responding to questions.

“The professionalism and the thorough way the issues were handled continues to speak very well on all of our students in the process,” Roney said. “I don’t think it’s the end of the conversation, because it’s a very important conversation.”

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