Could Dorm Choice Determine if Your Child Abuses Alcohol in College?

By Hugh C. McBride

You realize that college can be a time of experimentation, but you think you’ve prepared your child (actually, your young adult now) for the challenges that life has in store.

From elementary school all the way through the high school years, you paid close attention to the influences that could have a negative impact on your child’s healthy development.

You watched for signs of peer pressure, kept in touch with teachers, and talked to your teen about issues such as sexual activity and substance abuse. And all in all, things turned out pretty well. You have a great relationship with your child, and you’re now the proud parent of a college student.

But a new study indicates that you may have overlooked an influence that can have a significant impact on whether or not your college student engages in binge drinking.

According to a report that was published in the November 2009 edition of the Journal of American College Health, college students who live in coeducational dormitories may be more likely to binge drink than are students who reside in single-sex dorms.

About the Study

The binge drinking study was led by Brian Willoughby, a visiting professor at Brigham Young University. Willoughby’s team reached its conclusions after analyzing data that had been collected during a survey of 510 students from five colleges (BYU students did not participate in this survey).

• Sixty-eight of the surveyed students lived in single-sex dorms, and the other 442 lived in dormitories that housed both male and female students.
• Fifty-six percent of surveyed coed dorm residents reported drinking alcohol on a regular basis, and 41.5 percent said they engaged in binge drinking once a week.
• Among the residents of single-sex dormitories, 27 percent said they drank alcohol every week and 17.6 percent reported binge drinking every week.

Binge drinking is generally defined as drinking five or more alcoholic beverages in one session (for men) or four or more drinks in one session (for women).

“The new numbers echo previous research, which has put the binge-drinking problem at about 40 percent of students nationwide,” USA Today writer Greg Toppo reported in a Nov. 17 article. “Since 1993, a longitudinal study by the Harvard School of Public Health has consistently found that about 44 percent of students at four-year colleges in the USA are binge drinkers.”

College Life in the 21st Century

News of the discrepancy in drinking rates between residents of coed and gender-specific dormitories has also shed light on another aspect of college life in the 21st century that may surprise many people: the prevalence of coed dorms.

Ten months before the publication of the binge drinking study, Willoughby, co-author Jason Carroll (also a BYU professor) and two professors with the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, published a report on the status of housing on U.S. college campuses.

This report, which was titled “The Decline of In Loco Parentis and the Shift to Coed Housing on College Campuses,” appeared in the January 2009 edition of the Journal of Adolescent Research. After collecting housing data from 100 U.S. colleges (including the nation’s 50 largest schools), the researchers concluded that almost 90 percent of college and university residence halls are open to both male and female students.

Though most of these dorms separate men and women by floor or at least by room, some actually permit male and female students to share rooms.

A May 2, 2008 article by Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith reported that more than 24 colleges and universities allowed opposite-sex roommates:

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it's not about sex.

Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

"It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you," said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Mass., who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. "Students aren't doing this to make a point. They're not doing this to upset their parents. It's really for practical reasons."

In a May 4, 2009 article that appeared on the National Review Online, writer Karin Venable Morin (an opponent of same-sex dorm rooms on college campuses) reported that at least 51 U.S. colleges and universities now allow students to share rooms with members of the opposite sex.

What’s a Parent to Do?

The binge drinking study was relatively small-scale (510 students from five universities), so additional investigations will need to be conducted in order to verify or negate the conclusions that were drawn by Willoughby and his fellow researchers.

But the study is sure to raise the eyebrows of more than a few parents of college students, and will likely lead to some interesting conversations during the upcoming holiday break. Both reactions (piqued curiosity and serious discussions) can be positive if handled in an appropriate manner.

If your child is in college, you should already be aware that this traditional time of growth, exploration and experimentation is probably occurring in an environment that provides easy access to alcohol and offers many opportunities for interactions with potential romantic partners.

In other words, it is likely that your child is being exposed to many of the people, pressures and situations that you tried so hard to keep away for the first 18 years.

Hopefully, though, you did more than just try to shield your child from life’s more dangerous enticements. If you taught your child how to handle peer pressure, if you discussed the dangers of substance abuse in an open and honest way, and if you talked (and listened) about the risks and realities of sex, then you may have less to worry about than you might think.

However, regardless of how well any parents have prepared their children for the social challenges and pressures of college life, some will succumb to temptation and will make poor decisions regarding substance abuse.

If you discover that your student has been abusing alcohol or other drugs, don’t simply dismiss the behavior as a harmless rite of passage. Substance abuse is always dangerous, and if it leads to addiction the damage can be significantly more severe.