Due to a reporting error, the story “Freshmen abstaining from alcohol, study finds” incorrectly stated the organizational status of Outside the Classroom. It’s not a nonprofit. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
The Friday night keg party might not be the destination of choice for as many freshmen as before, according to a recent study.
Outside the Classroom, an organization focused on tackling high-risk drinking, found the percentage of freshmen abstaining from alcohol increased from 38 percent to 62 percent since 2006.
The organization conducted a survey of more than half a million high school seniors nationwide who were required to participate in online alcohol education programs through their future universities.
The survey was confidential, said Brandon Busteed, the organization’s founder and CEO.
The students were asked whether they had consumed an alcoholic beverage in the past two weeks, in the past 30 days, or in the past year.
“When you see students reporting no alcohol in the past two weeks, there’s several of them you can say are truly abstainers — like they don’t drink at all — and the rest of them you can say are light drinkers at best, or might have drank heavily once in the past year,” he said.
UNC Assistant Dean of Students Dean Blackburn found these results to be in agreement with the University’s findings.
UNC requires all incoming freshmen to take an online alcohol education program through mystudentbody.com, as well as a national survey through the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, Blackburn said.
