Student Voices Project 1 Changing the Culture of College Drinking: The Student Voices Project Linda C. Lederman, Marianne LeGreco, Beth Babin, Lisa Farinelli, Bree McEwan, Jessica Nay, Tara Schuwerk, and Jade Williams with Layne Owens, Alison Trego, Jian Yang, Christina Colp- Hansbury, and Sarah O'Colmain Hugh Downs School of Human Communication Arizona State University Executive Summary Background: The Student Voices Project (SVP) at Arizona State University grew out of two groups with an interest in college drinking on ASU’s campus. First, the Alcohol Task at Arizona State University was given the job of better understanding ASU’s alcohol use policy. This group identified the need for comprehensive data and recommendations for implementing the alcohol use policy on ASU’s campus. The second group emerged to meet that need. This group came out of a project led by Dr. Linda Lederman in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. Along with students in her health communication seminar, Dr. Lederman collaborated with Karen Moses and the staff at the Department of Wellness and Health Promotion to form the Student Voices Project. The SVP sought out and analyzed the student perspective on ASU’s alcohol use policy as well as the general culture of college drinking. Conduct of Inquiry: The SVP used a multi-methodological approach to obtain the student perspective on college drinking at ASU, including questionnaire data from the 2004 National College Health Assessment which made available through ASU’s office of Wellness and Health Promotion; rhetorical analyses of websites, primarily myspace.com, to gain a better understanding of how alcohol use at ASU is discussed in public forum; and focus group interviews. The bulk of the SVP report consists of data from the focus groups regarding drinking-related experiences, including perceptions of ASU’s alcohol policy. Findings: Six major themes are discussed in the SVP report. The first three themes relate to the general context and culture of drinking on ASU’s campus: avoiding consequences, the spectacle of drinking, and safety issues. The remaining three themes address specific needs of students in relationship to alcohol: recognizing alcohol poisoning, policy backlash, and the need for improved resources. First Recommendation: ASU review the social activities that complement our dry campus policy and design a campaign to promote a new use of the phrase “party school” to capture them. Second Recommendation: ASU continue to collect data on the effectiveness of the ban on alcohol on the campus policy position, including data on drinking and driving to determine if it is an unintended consequence of the alcohol ban. Third Recommendation: ASU make its alcohol policy, including the ban on drinking on campus, work to protect the students consistently and to help students see why this policy works to their benefit. Fourth Recommendation: ASU provide more comprehensive information about alcohol poisoning and what students need to do when they encounter it, including a clear understanding of the consequences for calling for help vs. the consequences of not. Fifth Recommendation: ASU Alcohol Task Force should examine the complex question of the role of the University in socializing students who are of legal age and want to drink into safe drinking-related behaviors, and that the Task Force invite interested administrators to join into an examination of the role of a university in educating its students to make healthy life choices, including the use of alcohol, once they are of legal age.