Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso: no big deal, many college students might say. Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso times three or four, and they still might tell you they’re not intoxicated. Therein lies the danger of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, whose popularity has grown in recent years among college-aged drinkers, drawing the attention of concerned health officials, politicians and college administrators. Experts say that even one is a recipe for disaster, and so do officials at Ramapo College : they banned alcoholic energy drinks on campus this month. Peter Mercer, president of the New Jersey college, said students referred to the above concoction when describing the effects of drinks such as Four Loko, which is particularly popular around the campus. Four Loko is one of a few flashy, canned drinks that take the mixing out of the equation, making it that much easier for students to get dangerously intoxicated, faster. Mercer said concerned students told him the inexpensive 23-ounce, 12% alcohol energy drinks were “all of a sudden very popular,” and Four Loko was involved in a couple of incidents of excessive drinking. Since the start of fall semester, 23 people have been hospitalized with alcohol intoxication. ON THE WEB: Why do students take so long to grow up? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Are prescription drugs “cheating”? Mercer called Four Loko a “cynical product” whose only purpose is to get the drinker intoxicated quickly. Others agree: Glen L. Sherman, co-chair of the Alcohol and Other Drug Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said the drinks are dangerous because of their apparent targeting of underage student consumers and their high alcohol content — drinking one can of Four Loko is the approximate equivalent of drinking four beers, according to an informational page NASPA recently posted on its website. “These beverages are of great concern to us,” Sherman wrote in an e-mail. “Each campus must decide what specific steps make sense to best educate students about and try to protect them from these risks, and to encourage students to make good decisions when they are confronted by them.” Ramapo’s ban is part of a “multi-pronged approach” addressing excessive alcohol consumption, Mercer said. Other measures the college has taken include increasing after-hours security measures in residence halls, tightening visitor policies and holding student focus groups. Those additional steps may be crucial for the ban to have even a shot at success. Kathleen E. Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has studied college students’ use of energy drinks, both with and without alcohol. She said that if the college can’t ban drinks like Red Bull and vodka from local bars, it won’t be able to stop consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. But the college can send a signal. “A college ban will make people take a second look and maybe they’ll be more aware of what they’re drinking,” Miller said. “It’s inherently potentially dangerous to mix caffeine and alcohol because you’re sending your body mixed signals.” The caffeine stimulates the system while the alcohol depresses it, making students feel less drunk than they actually are. Through her research, Miller found that students who consume energy drinks with or without alcohol are more likely to engage in risky behavior like drug use, smoking or binge drinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean the energy drinks cause the behavior, but there is a correlation. Energy drink consumption “isn’t necessarily a gateway behavior, but it is what you might call a red-flag behavior,” she said. In a June 2008 study published in the Journal of American College Health, Miller found that 26% of surveyed public university undergraduates reported consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol in the past month, while about half said they’d done so more than once. Efforts at Ramapo have curbed and will continue to curb consumption of alcoholic energy drinks, Mercer said, but “it’s unrealistic to assume that it’ll be totally eliminated.” That’s not stopping him from trying, though: At the next meeting of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, Mercer plans to make his case to other college and university presidents. “The risk for their students is just as high as the risk for mine,” he said. “I’ll tell them what I’ve done and hope that they may want to follow suit.” States such as New Jersey and New Mexico are considering banning the drinks entirely. The drinks are also on the federal government’s radar. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration threatened to ban the drinks if manufacturers could not prove they were safe for consumption. No regulations have been issued yet, but an FDA press officer, Michael L. Herndon, told Inside Higher Ed on Friday that the agency has received 19 responses from 27 manufacturers and distributors, and plans to evaluate those submissions and other scientific evidence “as soon as possible in order to determine whether caffeine can be safely and lawfully added to alcoholic beverages.” Herndon said the decision is a high priority but “could take some time.” But Mercer doesn’t need FDA regulations to deem the drinks unsafe, especially when it comes to students. “I don’t accept that it’s a rite of passage to collegiate life that people put themselves at risk,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

Students across the country are going on notice that drinking, smoking, using drugs or posting risqu? photos on the Web on weekends and during the summer can get them sidelined from school activities during the school year. Student athletes and those involved in other extracurricular activities in states including New Jersey, South Carolina and Indiana are signing codes of conduct that hold them accountable for their behavior regardless of whether school is in session. Some parents say their districts are going too far. “Schools are crossing the boundary of what they’re authorized to do and crossing into the realm of the family — that’s unconstitutional,” says attorney Matt Wolf who is challenging the policy in Haddonfield , N.J., where he represents a teenager who lost extracurricular privileges because of an underage drinking charge. ETIQUETTE: Suicide shows need for civility, privacy online WEEK OFF: College bans Facebook, Twitter, all social media Haddonfield’s attorney, Joe Betley, says the district is well within its right to establish rules for participating in extracurricular activities. “We can demand higher standards in leadership positions and from those wearing the uniforms of Haddonfield,” Betley says. Code of conduct rules vary from district to district. Some cover only the school year, some include athletes and some expand to all students participating in extracurricular school activities. “Participating in extracurricular activities is a privilege,” says Oby Lyles, spokesman for South Carolina’s largest school district in Greenville County. That privilege can be revoked when students who wear a school’s uniform or represent a school don’t follow rules of conduct at school and in the community. • In South Carolina, Greenville and Pickens counties have year-round conduct policies for athletes, holding them accountable when school is not in session. • In Indiana, Carmel Clay schools have a year-round conduct policy for athletes and band and choir members. The school district expanded conduct rules three years ago to include those involved in extracurricular activities, says student services director Steve Dillon. • At least half a dozen New Jersey school districts have year-round conduct expectations of both athletes and students involved in extracurricular activities. Other districts restrict the codes to a sports season or the school year, such as in Springfield, Mo., and Salem-Keizer, Ore., where athletes must be on good behavior 24-7 during the school year. “To label something a privilege does not justify a violation of the First Amendment,” says Ken Falk, legal director for Indiana’s American Civil Liberties Union , which is fighting a code-of-conduct case in federal district court. The case involves discipline placed on two female volleyball players in the Smith Green Community schools last year after they were accused of posting sexually suggestive photos on social networking sites during summer vacation. Erik Weber, attorney for the Smith-Green schools, says such policies can be enforced year-round because those representing the school in any kind of uniform can be held to a higher standard. “If they don’t like the rules, they don’t have to play,” Weber says. In Mountain Lakes, N.J., Michael Bernal-Silva fought his daughter’s suspension from a basketball team in 2007 after she attended a party where other underage students were drinking. Bernal-Silva settled out of court with the school district. “You’re not cops,” Bernal-Silva said to the school board. Bruno reports for the Daily Record in Morris County, N.J. Contributing: Ron Barnett, The Greenville (S.C.) News ; Tim Evans, The Indianapolis Star ; Didi Tang, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader ; Tracy Loew, (Salem, Ore.) Statesman Journal .

Many students dread public speaking and say they only sign up because the class is required. But in Sam Blank’s classroom, they find it isn’t so terrifying. “I’m a pretty well-liked person, considering the fact I teach a course that creates fear in people,” jokes Blank, 62, a communications professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York . Blank is among millions of educators who are praised, glorified — and sometimes verbally torn to shreds — on websites where students go to rate their professors. Luckily, he got a stellar rating: the No. 1 community college professor on the website RateMyProfessors.com . RateMyProfessors.com, known as RMP, is the front-runner among such sites, with about 1.9 million unique visitors a month, says comScore, which tracks Web traffic. Owned by MTV ‘s college network, mtvU, RMP lists more than 1 million professors from 6,500 schools in the USA, Canada and England . Other smaller such sites include KnowYourProfessor.com and ProfessorPerformance.com . On RMP, professors are rated on a five-point scale, for overall quality, helpfulness, clarity — and how easy it is to get an A in their class. Students also give chili peppers to professors they consider “hot.” Despite some harsh comments warning others away from professors some raters didn’t like, the website is about “shining a spotlight” on the best professors, mtvU’s Carlo DiMarco says. “College students always sought the advice of their peers, friends and family members” about which classes to take, he adds; online, they can seek advice from thousands of voices. Rodney Kashem recently bought RMP’s rival, ProfessorPerformance.com, and has revamped the site. Kashem, 24, a grad student at Dartmouth College, says it’s the same as checking hotel ratings before spending money on vacation; students are “customers” who want to make sure their tuition is well spent. Blank says he didn’t know about his top rating on RMP, but when a reporter told him, he said it was “absolutely wonderful. … Perhaps it’s an affirmation of my ability to teach.” Juann Watson, a psychology and mental health professor at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., was rated the site’s “hottest” professor of the year. Watson, 44, says she’s honored to be recognized, but “a chili pepper means nothing at this stage in my life or in my accomplishments.” Ted Coladarci, director of institutional research at the University of Maine, has studied how closely RMP’s ratings align with the teacher evaluations students write at the end of courses, and he says there’s a strong correlation. His findings , with co-author Irv Kornfeld, were published in the journal Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. But he cautions that students motivated to go online to rate a professor do not necessarily share the same opinions as everyone who took the class. “An instructor’s RMP ratings tend to derive from an exceedingly small and arguably biased sample of all students the instructor has had,” he says. Coladarci adds that some instructors receive less-than-stellar RMP ratings but nevertheless enjoy high ratings on their school’s official student evaluations of teaching. These cases, he says, “serve as an important cautionary note for RMP users. In short, it’s risky to form judgments about instructors and their courses based solely on what you see on RateMyProfessors.com.”

U.S. colleges aren’t doing enough to limit student access to alcohol, a new study contends. College administrators do recognize that student drinking is a major problem, but they focus on individual interventions and campus-based alcohol restrictions. They need to do more work with communities to develop policies to reduce excess drinking by students, such as monitoring of illegal sales of alcohol and limiting the number of retail alcohol outlets, according to study author Toben Nelson. SORORITIES: Antics at Miami U. spur alcohol debate REPORT: Alcohol companies go online to lure younger drinkers SOCIAL DRINKING: Alcohol habits of friends impact your own Nelson, an assistant professor in the epidemiology and community health division at the University of Minnesota , and colleagues analyzed the answers given by 351 college administrators who responded to an online survey in 2008. The respondents were asked if they were following recommendations from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s college drinking task force 2002 report on the best strategies for reducing student drinking. The 2008 survey showed there was “very little action on the task force recommendations and very little implementation,” Nelson said in a news release from the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research . “Very few had even had conversations in the communities.” Many of the college administrators knew about the task force recommendations, but more than 22% did not know about them, according to the survey. Previous studies had shown that community-based alcohol control is effective in reducing college student drinking through policies such as monitoring of illegal sales of alcohol, limiting the number of alcohol outlets, increasing prices, and mandatory training for servers. But Nelson and colleagues found that only one-third of college communities performed compliance checks for illegal alcohol sales, only 15% mandated server training, only 7% restricted the number of alcohol outlets, and only 2% raised alcohol prices. Among the study’s other findings: • Education about the consequences of excessive drinking was given to students at 98% of the colleges. The methods included lectures, meetings or workshops, poster campaigns and computer-based programs. • Two-thirds of colleges provided interventions for problem drinkers or those at high risk, either on campus or by paying for off-campus services. The study findings were released online in advance of publication in the October print issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research .

School friends may play a major role in your teen’s academic success, a new study suggests. It included 629 12th-graders in Los Angeles who filled out a questionnaire and then kept a record of activities such as time spent studying and time spent with school friends and out-of-school friends. Students with higher grade-point averages (GPAs) had more school friends than out-of-school friends. The more school friends, the higher the GPA. “We found that within an adolescent’s friendship group, those with a higher proportion of friends who attended the same school received higher grades,” Melissa R. Witkow, an assistant professor of psychology at Willamette University, said in a University of California, Los Angeles , news release. “This is partially because in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same environment.” Witkow was a UCLA graduate student when she conducted the study, which was recently published online in the Journal of Research on Adolescence. The findings don’t mean that friends from outside of school aren’t beneficial. “These friendships are still important in terms of fulfilling adolescents’ social needs, and they are not necessarily always detrimental to achievement,” Witkow said. “For instance, friendships that form in academic settings outside of school, such as at an enrichment class, may very well promote achievement.”