ALBANY — After last year's beer-soaked Fountain Day at the University at Albany, the weather forecast for this year's go-round — 70s, sunny, perfect party conditions — might seem a prelude to disaster.
But when several thousand UAlbany students spill onto campus this afternoon to celebrate the annual rite, John M. Murphy, the school's associate vice president for student affairs, isn't worried.
This year, he's got a raft of pacifiers. Among them: a book of blank citations to be issued to the unruly, the uncivil and the unsober.
Administrators at UAlbany, the nation's No. 1 party school according to one survey, have made it a mission to purge over-the-top drinking from campus this year. But the school is not alone in its attempts to clamp down on alcohol abuse. Several Capital Region colleges have stepped up their enforcement of campus alcohol policies in recent years.
At Union College in Schenectady, officials logged 337 liquor-law violations in 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That's more than double the number counted in 2001.
UAlbany had 612 violations in 2003, compared with 529 in 2001.
At Skidmore, in Saratoga Springs, there were 450 violations in 2003. In 2001, there were 152.
Part of those increases have to do with more assiduous record keeping. Stricter enforcement also is a part of it, campus officials said.
“We as a college need to send a message to the students that we take this message seriously, and we're going to devote energy to it,” said Stephen Leavitt, Union's vice president of student affairs and dean of students. “We are going to be vigilant about doing that monitoring.”
The reason for ratcheting up the pressure, many said, is recognition that heavy drinking has grown into a major problem.
“It's like a changed consciousness with respect to the seriousness of the situation,” said Pat Oles, Skidmore College's dean of student affairs. “The colleges have realized just how consequential it is.”
According to a report released last month by the federal National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1,700 college students aged 18-24 died as a result of alcohol-related injuries in 2001 — an increase of 200 since 1998.
And, increasingly, there's a sense that educational efforts alone won't get the job done.
“The research clearly demonstrates that using those kind of techniques in isolation are not effective,” said Helen Stubbs, a spokeswoman for the Center for College Health and Safety, a Newton, Mass., nonprofit group that helps schools with their prevention programs.
The answer lies in so-called environmental approaches that include not just stricter enforcement but also increasing the number of alcohol-free activities available to students, working with nearby bars to cut out low-priced drink specials and breaking the perception among students that to drink means to drink a lot.
Experts who have studied student drinking say they haven't necessarily noticed a nationwide trend toward stricter enforcement — but that it is a crucial part to reducing binge drinking and other dangerous behavior.
“If students feel like there is no commitment on the part of the university to enforce the alcohol policy, they'll violate it,” said Dr. John R. Knight, director of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Children's Hospital Boston.
Colleges' new tactics include notifying parents of judicial violations, adding more residence hall assistants to keep an eye on students and coaching them to launch proceedings against violators — no matter how much of a “narc” it makes them feel like.
A first offense often results in a small fine, community service or education. Future violations can result in getting kicked off campus.
The lone student enjoying a cold one while talking to friends or listening to a ballgame isn't the target of the efforts, many administrators said. They're looking for the boisterous party flowing with booze.
Campus security officers and residential assistants are often alerted to that by a noise complaint. And when they arrive, if there's alcohol present, all of the students often get written up.
At Skidmore, the room owner also gets tagged with a misdemeanor.
“The kids, once they are aware of that, they don't want to have parties in their rooms,” said Dennis Conway, Skidmore's director of campus safety.
Some students said they noticed that campus officials were, at least, talking a stiffer game.
For 19-year-old UAlbany freshmen Mike Croce and Alicia Garofalo, they felt it, too.
Both were hit with violations after resident assistants showed up at rooms and found them in the presence of alcohol. Garofalo is appealing her citation — she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, she said, which was particularly frustrating to her because she knows many people who have gotten off with warnings.
But they both know somebody getting kicked off campus for breaking liquor rules. “You've got to be careful,” she said.
For Croce, who had just started a beer game, the violation didn't stop him from drinking the rest of the night, he said. But then, he had an encounter with a university officer a week later. Two run-ins in a week, he said, struck him as a bit too much bad luck. “Since then, I haven't really drank in my room,” Croce said.
Both Croce and Garofalo's parents were notified of the incidents. The parental heads-up was new to campus last year.
“Students will realize we're serious about having a positive experience,” Murphy said.