It’s clear from reading the online comments about the recent incident at Bates College that the community — both students and Lewiston residents — has a lot to say about what happened. We at Healthy Androscoggin and the Project Unite Substance Abuse Prevention Committee are hopeful that this will encourage ongoing dialogue and partnership between the community and students, so that we can experience a cultural shift in which celebration doesn’t have to result in injury or arrest.

Binge drinking is the No. 1 factor in sexual assaults, injuries and deaths on college campuses. A National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism report estimates that alcohol is involved in more than 700,000 assaults and more than 97,000 cases of sexual assault, including acquaintance rape, among college and university students in the United States each year. Alcohol is also associated with riots, hazing and various forms of nonsexual violence on campus.

Heavy drinking among college students doesn’t only affect students, but also damages and burdens the surrounding community. From complaints of vandalism, public urination and noise, one only has to look at the online comments to hear the frustration of nearby residents. Local police are an important resource for Bates College to call in back-up in order to protect the safety of students, as well as the neighborhood and property.

Among the officers present that night were members of the Alcohol Enforcement Team, a collaboration between Healthy Androscoggin, the Auburn, Lewiston and Lisbon police departments, and the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department, that receives funding from the Maine Office of Substance Abuse. The AET not only conducts coordinated underage drinking details, but provides training to police departments across the state on proper procedure. In this case, the police were called in by Bates College security to help with a situation that had gotten out of control.

Another thing that is clear from the news reports is that the number of students involved in the melee were a very small percentage of the total student body at Bates. It is our hope that the those students in the blogs who expressed concern or embarrassment for the situation step forward, fight the notion that one must be highly intoxicated to have a good time, and work for cultural change. Judging from the energy online, there just might be a lot of people interested in helping.

Healthy Androscoggin is a community coalition dedicated to improving the health of Androscoggin County citizens through collaborative planning, community action, education and prevention.

Christine Letcher is the health promotion coordinator for Healthy Androscoggin in Lewiston.