"None of them claim to be loud, rowdy, drunk or disorderly neighbors when they apply to Tufts, and yet that is how I’ve come to know some of them," says Larry Bacow.
It has been nearly two years since Dr. Bacow first met with a student to discuss the circumstances that led the young man to end up passed out on the front lawn of the president’s campus residence at 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. While no college or university is immune to the issue of high risk drinking, Dr. Bacow’s approach to managing it at Tufts is unique.
Since the fall of 2010, President Bacow has been reading the campus safety report and personally meeting with dozens of students who had been taken to the hospital for excessive alcohol consumption.
We recently had a chance to talk with Larry Bacow, who will be stepping down this year as Tufts University’s 12th president, to learn more about his personal approach to combating binge drinking at Tufts.
In Search of Culture Change
"There is a certain sameness to every conversation," says Dr. Bacow. After reading aloud the public safety report, he says he wants to understand the circumstances that led a student to drink so much that they "found themselves lying in a pool of their own vomit, or urinating on public property, or passed out in front of a dorm having soiled themselves." Invariably, the students are mortified by their actions, even more so because they’re discussing them with the president of the university. They also insist they didn’t realize how much they were drinking and almost all profess, "This is not me."
The students with whom Dr. Bacow meets all claim that they wouldn’t let a friend who had been drinking get behind the wheel of a car, saying that it’s wrong as they could hurt themselves and harm others. "And yet they don’t think that it’s dangerous to drink to the point of passing out and vomiting," remarks Dr. Bacow.
The president knows that many students are experiencing life without the constant supervision and accountability that comes from living at home and that means testing who they are and testing limits. But he’s quick to point out that they would be kicked out if they had falsified their grades or misrepresented who they were to get into school. And in his opinion, excessive alcohol consumption — and in many cases, the loud, rowdy, and disorderly conduct that ensues — is a misrepresentation of the very character that earned them an admission to Tufts.
The real point to the meetings is to enlist their help. No matter what schools do to curb risky drinking. "It’s the students themselves who have to change the culture," says Dr. Bacow.
"We all work at Tufts because we love the students and want to keep them safe. It’s too painful to lose a student,” says Dr. Bacow. The students he meets with, in Dr. Bacow’s opinion, are lucky. He should know. When he was a professor at MIT, Bacow tells them, he had the painful experience of meeting the parents of Scott Krueger, an MIT freshman who died after a night of binge drinking, having aspirated his own vomit.
Promises
The statistics are staggering with some 7,000 college students dying from alcohol related incidences every year. Just this month, the Ithaca Journal in Ithaca, NY reported that two students died, one a freshman at Cornell University and another a freshman at Ithaca College, with alcohol contributing to their deaths.
"I ask the students to metaphorically take away their keys," says Dr. Bacow. This is the promise he asks the students to make when they meet with him. He appeals to them because as much as he wishes a responsible adult could be everywhere to safeguard them, he also knows students don’t want that. He appeals directly to the ones whom he meets in his office, because they’ll again be with friends who are drinking. But this time he hopes they’ll not only stop, but they’ll tell a friend to stop excessively drinking, too. Certainly, telling a friend to stop drinking pales in comparison to telling the president of the university why they didn’t do anything.
"I make it very clear that if they don’t say ‘STOP — You’ve had enough to drink’, they will feel very, very guilty because a student who drinks to the point of passing out, can die," says Dr. Bacow.
The first to admit there’s no way to measure the impact of these one-on-one meetings with students, he can’t help but feel he has to try and do something. And he’s not alone, from the dean’s office and counseling center to the health center and the coaches, whom he adds have been "very supportive" by convening meetings of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee to discuss how student captains can set examples and serve as role models for all students.
Admittedly, it’s a tough process and it doesn’t seem that any one school has solved the problem. In fact, Dr. Bacow believes that the problem of risky drinking doesn’t have a solution, rather "it’s a condition that needs to be managed." With a new student body every year, "there will always be extreme behaviors at the edge of the distribution," says Dr. Bacow. "Partly what we’re trying to do is figure out a way of coping with and moderating that extreme behavior."
As Dr. Bacow’s tenure at Tufts comes to an end, he’s appreciative of Tufts’ dedicated faculty and staff, but says he’ll continue to make a direct appeal to the students themselves. He’ll ask them to challenge the attitudes of their peers that accept dangerous drinking and hazing behaviors as the norm.