STAFF EDIT: Not all publicity is good

Last Friday, BU Today published a story about new measures instated to curb student alcohol abuse. In a “beefed-up campaign” against binge drinking, BU Today reported that, in conjunction with control efforts by the Boston University, Boston and Brookline police departments, they will begin posting the previous weekend’s enforcement statistics every Thursday.

First of all, if the university wants to get its message out about underage drinking, there are other ways to go about this than to broadcast weekly statistics in a publication that most BU students have unsubscribed to regardless. Students are not going to eagerly refresh their inboxes waiting on enforcement statistics before they decide on their plans for the weekend.

Those who are around East Campus on Friday and Saturday nights have all seen ambulances parked outside of Warren Towers preparing to cart away drunken freshmen. The issue is not one of awareness; students know of the consequences of weekend partying. The problem is that in college, students are heavily exposed to binge drinking, sometimes for the first time, and therefore find themselves in compromising situations more than they should. If anything, the university should do more to publicize and reinforce detailed information about what binge drinking entails and measures students can take to protect themselves against it.

Time and money is spent on putting these statistics together and publishing them, time and money that could be more wisely spent. No matter how hard an institution cracks down, no matter how many students are sent to the hospital every weekend, college students will still drink, and drink to excess.

This new tactic is modeled after a “successful” campaign to curb binge drinking at several University of California schools. According to the BU Today article, researchers in California found “significant reductions in the incidence and likelihood of intoxication at off-campus parties and bars/restaurants” for the campuses using the new enforcement procedure. But how can research really determine the success of a tactic like this? Perhaps the students simply went and stayed farther off-campus when drinking. Perhaps they simply didn’t get caught. There is no way we can really know.

Publishing these statistics is like saying to a smoker, “smoking is bad for you.” Of course it is, and of course there will be consequences. But it will not do anything to stop it. The only real way to curb binge drinking in college is to lower the drinking age to 18, something that is obviously beyond an institution’s power. For now, there will always be 21st birthdays where students deem it necessary and appropriate to take 21 shots, and there will always be freshmen throwing up in an Allston alleyway on a Friday night. Publishing statistics about it is nothing more than a statement of the obvious.