Wine Night,“Bro-Dinners,” and Jungle Juice: Disaggregating Practices of Undergraduate Binge Drinking

Abstract

Undergraduate binge drinking, a well-documented problem at U.S. institutions of higher education, has been associated with a host of negative behavioral health outcomes. Scholars have extensively examined individual- and institutional-level risk factors for college binge drinking. However, these data have not been effectively translated into binge-drinking interventions. To inform the development of additional evidence-based prevention programs, this article documents the varied social practices that constitute “binge drinking,” drawing on primarily ethnographic data. By disaggregating what survey research has largely examined as a unified outcome, we offer a descriptive account of the different reasons for and contexts in which students consume alcohol in amounts that constitute binge drinking. Our discussion points to modifiable social factors in university life as strategy for prevention. The implication of our argument is that acknowledging and responding to the varied motivations underlying students’ alcohol use is one strategy to enhance campus binge-drinking prevention.