COLLEGE CHIEFS PLEDGE TO BATTLE ALCOHOL ABUSE

The presidents of the state's six public universities tomorrow will sign a
declaration committing themselves to dealing with drinking problems on
their campuses.

Though the declaration doesn't kick off any new initiatives, some on the
campuses say it shows that alcohol abuse has finally grabbed the attention
of the schools' top leaders.

"It is a milestone," said Pat Fabiano, director of prevention and wellness
services at Western Washington University. "The highest officers will be
saying out loud that this is an issue that affects students academically
and socially.

"These kinds of efforts used to come from little offices in the basements
of health centers."

Tomorrow's ceremony is being hosted by the Council of Presidents, an
association of the public four-year schools in the state. Participating
presidents will be Richard McCormick of the University of Washington, Karen
Morse of Western Washington University, Jane Jervis of The Evergreen State
College, Ivory Nelson of Central Washington University and Steven Jordan of
Eastern Washington University. Gretchen Bataille, provost at Washington
State University, will sign for President Sam Smith.

The ceremony will start a day of workshops at which representatives from
each school will share information about their substance-abuse programs.

Officials stress that alcohol- and substance-abuse prevention have existed
on their campuses for some time. "We have always taken this issue
seriously," said Deborah Costar, assistant to the vice president of student
affairs at the UW.

But the group effort, participants say, is justified by recent highly
publicized incidents involving alcohol at universities across the nation,
including the deaths of two students from alcohol overdoses in Louisiana
and Massachusetts. Several schools, including WSU, had student riots that
involved drinking or reactions to tougher rules on drinking.

Fabiano said the event also will be an opportunity to show off some new,
successful approaches in controlling binge drinking. Western and WSU, for
example, are part of a new national effort to change the image of student
drinking.

Their campaigns have focused on statistics that show the bulk of students
are not heavy drinkers. Western, for example, is running ads in the student
newspapers saying that 66 percent of students have four drinks or fewer
when they go to parties, to counter the notion that everybody drinks heavily.

Anonymous surveys measuring substance use by students at Western show that
students are drinking less just a year after the start of the campaign. The
percentage of students who said they drank five or more drinks in one
sitting dropped seven percentage points, from 34 to 27 percent.

Fabiano said most students think the percentage of heavy drinkers is
higher, which makes the ads effective.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski