The death of a first-year USC student at an off-campus frat party in 2015 due to alcohol poisoning brought increased administrative and media scrutiny onto the campus, but between 2015 and 2016 alcohol transports doubled and fraternity alcohol violations hit a five-year high. Despite the screaming urgency of the situation, the university has primarily resorted to finger-wagging to solve the problem.
During summer 2016, President Pastides warned of “significant action” against fraternities if their records didn’t improve. But based on the lack of action the following year, the school seems to be more than willing to roll over on alcohol. In fact, Pastides himself seems resigned to the issue, saying, “Even though we have zero tolerance, I think it’s unrealistic to think that zero events, you know, zero arrests, zero [medical] transports is a realistic goal.”
For whatever reason, USC doesn’t seem to have a substantial commitment to its own zero-tolerance policy. And nowhere is this more evident than in their AlcoholEdu program.
AlcoholEdu is an online alcohol prevention course that the university requires incoming students under the age of 23 to take before their first semester. The two to three hours of videos, surveys and activities are meant to foster a “safe and healthy community.” For a program meant to be the student’s introduction to the facts of alcohol on campus, one would assume that it would explain and affirm the university’s zero-tolerance policy. However, AlcoholEdu goes to great lengths — with its slick production values, professional animations and upbeat music — to avoid tying itself to anything so rigid as rules.
The course does not encourage students to obey the law, but instead to become what it calls “responsible drinker(s).” “We won’t tell you not to drink,” the introductory video assures you. In a later segment titled “Goals,” the program doubles down on this baffling promise, saying, “Whether you drink or not is your choice.”
One scene opens, “Imagine you're at a bar,” then goes on to show students how to determine proper portion sizes of different alcoholic beverages. Surprisingly, only five minutes of the course is devoted to reviewing the law — casually tacked on as a separate document to “check out” and e-sign.
All of these criticisms could be considered nitpicking if AlcoholEdu was proven to actually be an effective preventive. But it isn’t. A study from the National Center for Biotechnology Information that measured the course’s influence on students’ alcohol-related problems in seven domains — physiological, academic, social, driving under the influence/riding with drinking drivers, aggression, sexual risk taking and victimization — noted that, while problems in the physiological, social and victimization domains decreased temporarily for students who took the course, there were no lasting effects. In other words, by the spring it was like students had never taken the course.
Drinking is a problem on campus, and it’s not going to be solved by a program that claims the college experience doesn’t have to involve alcohol but assumes it will anyway.
If the university really wants to prevent alcohol misconduct and reduce the need for transports, it needs to toss AlcoholEdu and take steps towards real, substantive reform of its enforcement methods. As long as USC wears kid gloves with Greek Life and incoming freshmen, we can probably expect some new ultimatums from Pastides, but I doubt we can expect anyone to care.