Binge drinking at university level can have long-term consequences, writes Raashied Galant.
It’s 1.30am on a Friday. The clubs on Melville’s 7th Street have 30 minutes before the statutory sound-kill and another phuza-Thursday is coming to an end.
Groups of drunk young people hover around ice buckets, which are still crammed with unopened beers and ciders.
On Thursday nights, it’s “buy one, get one free” – quite a bit of bang for your drinking buck.
For these patrons, the night is not over as these drinks are not takeaways… they must be downed now, here, in the club.
It is binge drinking at its consistent best. The promise of two drinks for the price of one is good enough to save up for the week.
But, for many, this fun will entail more than just getting drunk. For some it will mean missing lectures in the morning because they are hung over.
For another, it might lead to accepting a lift from the guy she vaguely knows, but who’s been so chivalrous and generous with the drinks the whole night.
For others, it could mean getting into that crowded car with a driver who’s not far from the inebriated state they are all in.
Or perhaps, in the absence of transport, walking back to the student residence about a kilometre down the road… wasted.
Most of the young people in the Melville club are students from the nearby universities, but this scenario is common around the country at clubs and bars close to tertiary institutions.
Binge drinking – rapid and excessive drinking over a short period of time – is a reality of student life but few institutions have taken steps to reduce the harm students might face as a result of it.
In a recent study conducted by the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication, only two of the five universities and three FET colleges surveyed had comprehensive alcohol policies that included clear guidelines on alcohol consumption and promotion on campus, as well as mandates to conduct alcohol awareness campaigns and promote safe drinking practices off campus.
While alcohol consumption and advertising were effectively prohibited on all the campuses that were surveyed, these prohibitions do nothing to address the hazardous drinking behaviour many students engage in off-campus.
The dangers of binge drinking are not confined to the sometimes life-threatening choices young people might make in their state of drunkenness.
It also has consequences that can emerge much later. So, while a poor choice could land a young person in jail with a criminal record, pregnant with an unplanned baby or injured from a drunken brawl or accident, binge drinking could also lead to poor academic performance and eventual dropping out.
This has knock-on effects on family, society and the future prospects of the young person.
There are also the health consequences, especially for the brain and the liver, and the prospect of developing alcohol dependency.
Tertiary institutions, which are home to thousands of young people of drinking age, who in many cases are away from direct parental guidance for the first time, have a responsibility to reduce the risks their students might face as a result of harmful drinking practices.
Simply prohibiting alcohol consumption and advertising on campus is hardly sufficient.
It’s saying at least we’re addressing the problem, yet washing our hands of the harm arising from alcohol abuse when the students are off campus.
While all the institutions surveyed by Soul City had general counselling services available for students, none of them had on-campus alcohol treatment or support services.
If an alcohol problem was detected in counselling, the student was referred to an outside service.
Only one institution had a free dial-a-lift service staffed by student volunteers.
None of the institutions surveyed had tools in place to monitor the venues selling alcohol in proximity to campuses and residences to ensure they were conforming to the Liquor Norms and Standards and were safe drinking spaces for their students.
These are just some of the ideas universities and colleges could consider in order to protect students comprehensively against the harms arising from the occasional, or even regular, binge-drinking sprees that happen off-campus.
Tertiary institutions are centres of higher learning, responsible for producing the cream of this country’s expertise. But they need to come to the party in protecting this expertise from being damaged or compromised due to hazardous alcohol consumption.
These institutions have a responsibility to reduce any harm their students might face, as well as to do everything possible to prevent them from being places where students develop disorders related to alcohol.
In this way, the student enjoying a phuza-Thursday night would not be making life choices that diminished the very reason they were on campus in the first place.
* Raashied Galant is the advocacy co-ordinator at the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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