Eight years after a nationally-publicized student death and a community-wide effort to curb binge drinking, those drinking rates have remained the same.
The University has participated in a nationwide experiment that set up the Campus-Community Coalition for Change, a group set up to raise awareness about binge drinking and modify the drinking culture at LSU.
Despite a major attempt, data has shown the same number — 51 percent — of students surveyed still binge drink.
But Nancy Mathews of the CCCC, which has helped change laws, create stiffer penalties for existing laws and implement alcohol education programs, maintains that all the efforts are worth it. Mathews says the negative consequences related to drinking — drunk driving, sexual assaults and noise complaints — are down.
And that is the start of social change.
 
Big changes
Still feeling the pain of University sophomore Benjamin Wynne’s death in 1997, LSU accepted a $700,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — the country’s largest health care charity — that would make the University a part of a 10-school study examining binge drinking.
Jenkins appointed Mathews to take control of the University’s program.
Since then, the CCCC has not stopped to institute change in campus and community culture.
Mathews said it instituted several policies on campus. CCCC increased penalties for underage drinking violations on campus, forcing underage students to notify their parents and undergo mandatory alcohol classes if they get caught drinking on campus.
The coalition also established some substance-free residence halls, set up late night events in the Union and University Recreation and worked with Student Government to establish late night transportation — known among students as the “drunk bus.”
To educate freshmen on the dangers of binge drinking, the coalition, in coordination with the Wellness Education Center, set up a mandatory 90-minute online alcohol tutorial that all freshmen must complete before the end of their first semester.
But Mathews said these campus changes were the easy part.
After about two years, Mathews said the coalition moved on to the city to change ordinances and stiffen penalties.
The coalition lobbied to pass a law making the manufacturing of fake IDs illegal and increasing the penalties for underage people caught using fake IDs.
Now, someone caught using a fake ID can go to jail for six months and face $1,000 in fines. The previous penalty was a $200 fine.
The coalition stopped a group of North Gate merchants from obtaining a special events permit to host a block party with a beer truck on Chimes Street.
Mathews said the group would have sold alcohol in a non-secure environment that spills over into campus. She said alcohol sellers would not be responsible for crowd control or underage drinking, which would put additional stress on city police.
But Mathews said the coalition instead suggested the group still have the block party, but only sell and allow alcohol in the bars and restaurants. She said people can socialize, buy food and listen to live bands in the streets — but keep the liquor in the bars.
With concerns that downtown Baton Rouge would turn into another Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the coalition coaxed the Metro Council into passing strict regulations for restaurants and bars that want to serve alcohol outside.
The coalition also successfully stopped a convenience store that wanted to locate on Nicholson, north of campus, from getting a permit to sell alcohol.
The coalition was not able help pass a law increasing the requirement age for bar access from 18 to 21.
But the CCCC is still trying to make some changes in the bar atmosphere.
Mathews said research shows more arrests, fights and police calls happen near bars with drink specials, and she is seeking to pass city ordinances to get rid of some specials.
Again taking the stance that she is not against alcohol, Mathews said she simply is against the way bars market alcohol to freshman and sophomore students in particular.
“Younger students use alcohol as a social lubricant when trying to make friends at bars,” Mathews said.
 
Hard facts
Despite the changes the CCCC has sparked on campus and in the community, it still is faced with binge drinking numbers that are the same as they were when the program began seven years ago.
The CCCC is not alone. Nationwide, none of the 10 universities that participated in the binge drinking experiment saw a drop in their binge drinking numbers.
Richard Yoast, American Medical Association Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse director and head of the nationwide “A Matter of Degree Program,” said even though the actual binge drinking rates are not down, the model — invoking social and attitudinal change by working with the campus and community — has lowered the negative consequences related to drinking.
“It certainly has been working to reduce the negative outcomes, so yes, [the model] does work,” Yoast said. “Take what we know from drinking and driving. In general, the laws were made stronger; we increased public education, adults started changing their attitudes, and it’s not acceptable now.”
Yoast said he realizes LSU has a difficult environment to work in, but he said he thinks some attitudes in the community have already changed.
Bob Morris, director of “A Matter of Degree” at the University of Colorado in Boulder, one of the 10 grant recipients, said although they also saw no drop in binge drinking rates, the coalition at his university brought a lot of different people together.
For the first time, Morris said, they convinced people in the community and on campus to take a vested interest in the health of the city.
Morris said they tightened the University’s alcohol standards and enforced a two-strike program that only gives students one chance for an alcohol violation. If the student repeats an offense, he is kicked out of school.
“There is a long list of negative consequences that go along with what some people presume to be a part of the college experience,” Morris said. “We are willing to say that should not be the case.”
But with the stringent rules, Morris said they have seen an increase of students running away from the police.
Other campuses participating in the grant — the University of Wisconsin and the University of Vermont — both said they found some success involving bar industry representatives in the coalitions.
Patrick Mockler of Mockler Beverages, the Anheuser-Busch distributer in Baton Rouge, said they were involved in a Hospitality Research Panel that Mathews sat on. But Mockler said Mathews announced the CCCC would dissolve the panel because they were not accomplishing their goals.
Mathews said she worked on the Hospitality Research Panel for three years and accomplished little because the bar owners are concerned with money.
“We reached our hand of friendship out,” she said. “Bar owners had demonstrated they are not interested in some of the goals we were interested in.”
 
A militant approach
Mathews said neither she nor the CCCC is anti-alcohol, but they are against the way many students abuse it by binge drinking.
Mathews said the task of the CCCC is to change the culture by changing the perceptions people have about alcohol.
“Education alone doesn’t work,” Mathews said. “It’s about changing attitudes.”
She said research shows binge drinking is dangerous and deadly, not just to those who binge drink, but also to the people who live in the community around binge drinkers.
“The point is, drunks bother others,” Mathews said.
But some say this is an especially difficult task in South Louisiana — home to a culture with deep-rooted traditions in alcohol-soaked tailgates and Mardi Gras parades. It is an environment in which beer companies sponsor private tailgating parties and under-21 drinking runs rampant, legally if a 18-year-old or older is with his or her parent.
Mathews, a Montana native, conceded that changing attitudes is an uphill battle, particularly when fighting athletic traditions. But she compared the situation to the attitudes people used to have about smoking.
People used to smoke while walking through shopping malls, she said, but because of education about the dangers of smoking, attitudes and actions about smoking have changed.
 
Institutionalize
the model
In August 2007, the grant will end and the CCCC will disband. Mathews said by then, most of the changes and policies the CCCC implemented will be institutionalized and there will be no need for the coalition.
For example, she said the police deal with criminal alcohol violations and the LSU Union runs the late-night activities.
But Mathews still has two more years to try and change the drinking culture at LSU — something she is set on accomplishing.
“We’re change agents at heart,” she said. “You don’t want LSU to be the dud of the group.”
Mathews said she was involved in the media response to the Benjamin Wynne death, which was traumatic.
“When you get accused of caring little for the people [by] the national media, you take that personally,” Mathews said. “You want to be able to show they’re wrong. There is evidence that [the model] works — you just have to stay with it.”