College presidents coping with campus violence and harassment caused by alcohol and drug use now have a new informational tool to help them examine the problem from a national perspective and develop responses to potential violence before it occurs.

Alcohol and Drugs on American College Campuses: Issues of Violence and Harassment, a report published by the Core Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC), is being mailed this week to college presidents nationwide. Developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the report is based on surveys from 89,874 students at 171 institutions and describes issues of collegiate violence, harassment and campus climate.

"For the first time, we can now survey for and quantify experiences of campus aggression and violence," said Philip W. Meilman, one of the report's authors. Cheryl A. Presley, another of the authors, added, "Alcohol-related violence has become a serious national concern at colleges, since it affects the quality of campus life, the well-being of students, and the communities in which they reside."

Meilman, co-director of the Core Institute, is director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University. Presley is executive director of the Core Institute and director of quality assurance at Student Health Programs at SIUC. Jeffrey R. Cashin and Jami S. Leichliter of the Core Institute are also co-authors.

Among the report's findings are:

• Almost one out of two students (43 percent) report that they experienced various forms of violence in the previous year, including threats of violence, actual physical violence, theft involving force or threat of force, forced sexual touching, unwanted intercourse, and ethnic or racial harassment. A high percentage of students were under the influence of alcohol or other drugs during these episodes, especially in incidents of unwanted sexual intercourse (79 percent), forced sexual touching (71 percent), actual physical violence (64 percent) and threats of physical violence (51 percent).
• Students who engage in binge drinking were 3.5 times more likely than their non-bingeing counterparts to be victims of physical violence. Also, binge drinkers were nearly three times more likely to endure unwanted sexual intercourse than non-bingers and more than twice as likely to have experienced forced sexual touching.
• Half the students (49 percent) reported that alcohol and drug use by fellow students interfered with their quality of life on campus, by interrupting studying (29 percent), messing up their space (25 percent), making them feel unsafe (22 percent), preventing enjoyment of events (19 percent) and adversely affecting group activities (12 percent).
• Beliefs of students regarding alcohol appear to support its use by creating positive norms and expectations, some of which can result in difficulties. For example, roughly two-thirds of the students believe alcohol breaks the ice, enhances social activity and gives people something to do. Half believe alcohol contributes toward having fun, facilitates male bonding and enhances connections with peers. And half the students (including 57 percent of males and 41 percent of females) believe that drinking facilitates sexual opportunities, which can be a setup for serious personal difficulties including sexual assault, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV infection.

As the authors note in their report, few people nowadays would agree that colleges and universities are "sedate ivory towers" immune from the concerns of the larger society. "Unfortunately, we are finding this evidence of violence, and campuses are not entirely safe havens," said Presley.

Other findings from the report are:

• Marijuana is the third most widely used drug on college campuses, after alcohol and tobacco, and its use is up from past years. Thirty-one percent of students reported using marijuana within the past 12 months, 19 percent in the previous 30 days, and 10 percent said they used it at least once a week.
• Historically, alcohol has been the most widely used drug on college campuses by a substantial margin and that continues to be true in this report. Overall, 83 percent of students reported drinking in the last year, 70 percent reported drinking within the previous 30 days, and 22 percent indicated that they average three or more drinking occasions per week.

"By utilizing this data, campus coalitions of students, faculty and staff can make decisions with the potential to directly impact the campus community in a positive way," said Meilman. "Working together, these groups can jointly take responsibility for changing the campus environment and ensuring safety for all campus constituencies."

Developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, this report is based on a newly expanded form of the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, which was administered to college campuses in 1995 and 1996. Demographics in the survey sample paralleled those of the 14 million students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States with respect to gender and ethnicity. The margin of error was less than one percent.