When it comes to drinking, Syracuse University students are above average.

“Our data shows that SU students drink a lot, significantly more than the national average, and that places our students at risk,” said Cory Wallack, director of the Counseling Center. “There are lots of reasons students drink to excess, and one reason is to manage anxiety, stress and life difficulties. This also contributes to high-risk drinking.”

This tendency to drink to excess became evident last week when SU’s annual security report was released and showed that the number of liquor law violations increased by nearly 25 percent from 2012 to 2013.

The number of violations rose from 1,020 in 2012 to 1,258 in 2013. Nearly 95 percent of the liquor law violations – 1,193 of 1,258 – occurred in residential facilities. There were two liquor law violation arrests in 2013, down from 12 in 2012.

Despite the sharp rise in violations, campus safety officials and administrators aren’t sure there’s one clear reason for the increase. Factors such as increased enrollment, SU’s recent party school ranking and SU students’ tendency to drink more than the national average may have contributed.

Hannah Warren, the public information and internal communications officer for the Department of Public Safety, said the increase is due to a rise in undergraduate student enrollment.

“We have no formal statistics on the number of parties taking place off campus each year, but it’s a reasonable assumption to say that the number of parties increased with the number of people,” Warren said.

The SU full-time undergraduate enrollment at the start of last year was 14,422, according to the 2013-14 SU fact book. The enrollment in the fall of 2012 was 14,169, according to the 2012-13 SU fact book.

Warren said it’s normal for the number of alcohol-related referrals to rise from year to year. Between 2008 and 2009, alcohol-related referrals increased by 210, she said.

Last year, DPS was called directly for about 150 of the referrals, Warren said, while the rest were referred to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, usually through residence life staff or other staff and faculty.

The Office of Residence Life referred all questions to DPS.

Wallack, the Counseling Center director, said the center works with the BE Wise alcohol awareness campaign and that the increased amount of alcohol consumption by SU students is a reason for the increase in disciplinary referrals.

The BE Wise campaign started in January 2013 with an aim of educating and generating awareness of alcohol poisoning, how to avoid it, its signs and how to respond to it, according to the campaign’s website.

Wallack also said he thinks the party rankings of the past couple of years have inspired students to “live up” to the ranking.

The Princeton Review ranked SU as the 12th best party school in the country in 2012 and the ranking rose to five in 2013. In the publication’s latest rankings, SU was ranked the top party school in the United States.

Wallack said research on BE Wise has shown an increase in student awareness of alcohol poisoning and warning signs, but that hasn’t translated to better results.

“We’ve seen less success though in terms of getting students to drink less,” he said. “They know their C.U.P.S. (symptoms of alcohol poisoning), and act on them, but still go well beyond their limits.”

Wallack said BE Wise is one aspect of a “comprehensive plan” to approach the problem of alcohol consumption on campus. He said BE Wise is working with other organizations to improve the campaign.

One of the goals of BE Wise is to inform students about ways to treat and report alcohol poisoning, Wallack said.

Pam Peter, director of SU’s Office for Student Rights and Responsibilities, said there have been about 75-80 times this semester when medical help was needed because a student had too much to drink. Peter said in fall 2013 there were 156 students who needed medical help — more than all of 2012.

Paul Smyth, emergency medical services manager for Syracuse University Ambulance, said there is an obvious problem with excessive drinking and that he hopes students become more accountable.

“I think a lot of it is students need to take more responsibility for themselves and their actions,” he said. “It comes back to making good choices and I know it’s kind of a cliché, but try to make good choices and these numbers could go down.”

Smyth said SUA keeps its own data, but it does not determine whether the call was for an alcohol-related incident.

“There’s so many subheads of categories in our dispatch system that we use that it’s complaint specific and those are the numbers that we keep,” he said.

The rise in numbers has not resulted in more staff being on duty, Smyth said. He said any time a call comes into SUA’s dispatch, they automatically contact DPS or ESF police as a safety precaution.

Smyth said the rise in referrals and need for medical attention will continue to be addressed in the future.

Said Smyth: “I’m sure this will be a continuing conversation across the campus community, working with different departments and student affairs to see if we can identify what the issue is and work together as a group to make these numbers decrease.”

Published on October 9, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Justin: jmatting@syr.edu | @jmattingly306