For Faculty and Staff

Award-Winning Campaign

Public service announcement by Counseling Center wins statewide competition.

Message from The Office of Student Success

This message was sent on behalf of James A. Anderson, former Vice President for Student Success, on November 7, 2006:

By now you have seen these signs around campus:

“73% of UAlbany students drink alcohol once or twice a week, less often, or not at all.”
“87% of UAlbany students do not allow alcohol to affect their academic performance.”

These signs are part of a Social Norms Campaign that has been launched by the University Counseling Center to reduce high-risk drinking behavior by correcting misperceptions about student alcohol use.

Nationwide and at UAlbany, students routinely overestimate the amount and frequency of alcohol use of their peers. The social norms model asserts that when students mistakenly perceive that their peers are drinking more than they actually are, they will feel pressure to follow this false norm. The social norms approach aims to dispel myths about unhealthy behavior by publishing the actual statistics about a campus population, thereby reducing high-risk alcohol usage. Other institutions (e.g. University of North Carolina, Florida State University, Michigan State University) have successfully used this method to reduce high-risk drinking behavior.

The current norms are based on anonymous survey data collected from a random, representative sample of UAlbany students drawn by the Office of Institutional Research.

The survey, the ACHA-National College Health Assessment was distributed to UAlbany classes with faculty permission. A variety of health-related information about our students was collected.

We encourage faculty and staff to help correct misperceptions and increase healthy behaviors by supporting the true norms displayed on our posters, engaging students and others in discussions about the posters, and inviting Counseling Center staff to meet or guest lecture in classes or events.

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How You Can Help

We encourage faculty and staff to help correct misperceptions and increase healthy behaviors by supporting the true norms represented by the data on the posters. You, too, can help create a healthier campus community:

• Engage students and others in discussions about the posters.
• Invite Counseling Center staff to your classrooms or events for a presentation on the campaign.
• Request posters to be hung in your office, department, and/or classroom – contact Dr. Brian Freidenberg for copies.
• If your classroom is randomly chosen by IRB to participate in the NCHA-ACHA survey this spring, please consider allowing us to conduct the survey in your class so that the sample that is representative of all UAlbany students.
• Support the accurate campus norms: that most UAlbany students engage in healthy behaviors.
• Challenge statements that perpetuate the misperception that students are unhealthy, such as "students drink alcohol frequently and in great amounts."
• Cater to the majority of students who do not allow alcohol to affect their studies by continuing to hold exams and quizzes on Fridays and Mondays, as well as other days.