Monday, Oct. 05, 1953
High, Tight & Drunk
Everybody is fairly sure that college students drink. The big question is: How much? After questioning students in 27 colleges from Maine to California, the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies next week will publish the results in a book, Drinking in College (Yale University Press; $4).
The Yale researchers found that 74% of the students reported they used alcoholic beverages. There was a higher proportion of drinkers among men (80%) than among women (61%). Drinking was commonest in private, nonsectarian, non-coeducational schools (92% of the men; 89% of the women), much lower in public coeducational institutions.
Unable to test the concentration of alcohol in the blood of their subjects, the researchers had to accept the undergraduates' own measurements of the various degrees of intoxication, which the scientists denned as:
"High indicates a noticeable effect without going beyond socially acceptable behavior, e.g., increased gaiety, slight fuzziness of perceptions, drowsiness . . .
''''Tight suggests unsteadiness in ordinary physical activities, or noticeable aggressiveness, or oversolicitousness, or loss of control over social amenities or of verbal accuracy, or slight nausea.
'-''Drunk suggests an overstepping of social expectancies . . . loss of control in ordinary physical activities, and inability to respond to reactions of others."
Passed out, the scientists agreed, is self-explanatory.
Three-fourths of all the men and 58% of the women reported having been high several times. Only half the men and one-fifth the women admitted having been repeatedly tight; half the men and only 10% of the girls had been drunk more than once; 16% of the men had passed out once, 18% more than once. Seven percent of the women had passed out once, only 2% had repeated the experience.
A study by Hofstra College of 1,000 high school students in Nassau County, N.Y. (pop. 672,765) showed that 90% of the students over 16 drink alcoholic beverages. But most are "temperate" drinkers; only 2% to 5% fitted the tag of "heavy drinkers." Interesting statistic: drinking among high-schoolers reaches its peak at 16, falls off sharply by 17.
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