College Binge Drinking Epidemic

College Binge Drinking Epidemic Throughout the years, drinking alcohol in excessive amounts has become somewhat synonymous with the college experience. It has become an expected occurrence for college-aged students to drink and party regularly, and overtime has transformed into an accepted social norm of college life. Extreme drinking has been a consistent social problem that has substantially grown on college campuses all around the United States for the past few decades. In fact, binge drinking is consistently voted as the most serious problem on campuses by collegiate presidents (College Binge Drinking Facts). Thus, most campuses have recognized binge drinking as a serious problem, yet this epidemic continues on, and many seem to turn a blind eye toward it. According to Learn-About-Alcoholism.com, 90% of the alcohol consumed by teens is consumed in the form of binge drinking. Binge drinking is a widespread phenomenon on most college campuses, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and has harmful and dangerous consequences as well as significant impacts on the goal higher education. First, it is important to establish a definition for the term ‘binge drinking.’ The National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA) defines binge drinking as “a pattern of drinking alcohol that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 gram-percent or above. For a typical adult, this pattern corresponds to consuming five or more drinks (male), or four or more drinks (female), in about two hours” (What Colleges Need to Know Now). In essence, binge drinking is the drinking of alcoholic beverages with the primary intention of becoming heavily intoxicated by alcohol over a short period of time. In a nationwide survey, nearly half of all college students (42%) reported binge drinking during the last two weeks. It is obvious that binge drinking is a severe problem on college campuses as almost half of all students engage in this risky activity