Wine night, 'bro-dinners', and jungle juice: Disaggregating practices of undergraduate binge drinking.

Undergraduate binge drinking, a well-documented problem at US institutions of higher education, has been associated with a host of negative behavioral health outcomes such as sexual assault, poor academic functioning, and mental health problems. Scholars have extensively examined individual-and institutional-level risk factors for binge drinking on campuses. However, these data have not been effectively translated into interventions to reduce rates of binge drinking. To inform the development of additional evidence-based binge-drinking prevention programs for college campuses, this paper documents the varied goals and social contexts 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: to meet new people at parties, to socialize with close friends, when hoping to find a sexual partner, when anticipating moving to a space where alcohol is more difficult to procure, to provide a way to move between affectively different situations, to cope with stress or anxiety, and to fit in. Our discussion links these motivations to factors beyond the individual and institutional levels, and 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.

Friends, strangers, and bystanders: Informal practices of sexual assault intervention.

Sexual assault is a part of many students' experiences in higher education. In U.S. universities, one in four women and one in ten men report being sexually assaulted before graduation. Bystander training programmes have been shown to modestly reduce campus sexual assault. Like all public health interventions, however, they have unintended social consequences; this research examines how undergraduate men on one campus understand bystander interventions and how those understandings shape their actual practices. We draw on ethnographic data collected between August 2015 and January 2017 at Columbia University and Barnard College. Our findings show that university training and an earnest desire to be responsible lead many men to intervene in possible sexual assaults. However, students' gendered methods target more socially vulnerable and socially distant men while protecting popular men and those to whom they are socially connected. Students' actual bystander practices thus reproduce social hierarchies in which low prestige may or may not be connected to actual risks of sexual assault. These results suggest that understanding intragroup dynamics and social hierarchies is essential to assault prevention in universities and that students' actions as bystanders may be effective at preventing assaults in some circumstances but may lead to new risks of sexual assault.

Social Dimensions of Sexual Consent Among Cisgender Heterosexual College Students: Insights From Ethnographic Research.

PURPOSE: Nonconsensual sexual experiences on college campuses represent a serious public health problem. The preponderance of existing research on students' actual consent practices is quantitative, lab based, or focused on how single dimensions of social context shape consent practices. Filling those gaps and illustrating ethnography's potential to lay the groundwork for innovative prevention, this paper draws on research conducted with undergraduates on two interconnected campuses to examine multiple social dimensions of sexual consent practices. METHODS: Data include in-depth interviews with over 150 students, 16 months of participant observation, 17 focus groups, and key informant interviews. Research conducted for this study took place between September 2015 and January 2017 at Columbia University and Barnard College. RESULTS: Although sexual consent is often approached as an individual or interpersonal practice, this research highlights potentially modifiable social dimensions of consent. These seven dimensions of sexual consent practices are as follows: (1) gendered heterosexual scripts; (2) sexual citizenship; (3) intersectionality; (4) men's fear of "doing" consent wrong; (5) "drunk sex"; (6) peer groups; and (7) spatial/temporal factors shaping when consent is assumed. CONCLUSIONS: Effective promotion of consensual sex, as a strategy to prevent assault, will likely require understanding and modifying the social structures that shape consent practices, rather than just legislation that mandates the promotion of affirmative consent. We describe seven potential modifiable social contextual dimensions of consent practices, along with related strategies to promote consensual sex and prevent sexual assault.