Spring Break 2007 presents an array of choices to adventure-seeking college students. They can get wasted or they can clean up waste in areas still recovering from floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. They can throw up their dinners or they can serve meals to appreciative homeless people. They can get hammered or they can swing a hammer, building or renovating homes in poverty-stricken places. They can emerge from spring break with foggy heads and hangovers or they can come away with life-lasting memories of the people they've served and the good they've done.

The choice is theirs, and each year more and more students are opting to take alternative spring breaks--volunteer trips organized by colleges, universities, and charitable or religious organizations. Some of the volunteer work involves manual labor, such as building homes, cleaning debris from storm-torn areas, planting trees and gardens, or removing invasive species. Other work might involve tutoring children, teaching English to immigrants, working with the elderly and hospital patients, or registering rural voters.

Some students at Western Illinois University will spend this year's spring break learning what it is like to be homeless. They will travel to Washington, D.C., with a program that focuses on volunteerism and learning. They will actually become homeless for two days, looking for food at soup kitchens and sleeping where they can find shelter. During the rest of the week, the group will work in a soup kitchen, lobby on Capitol Hill, and participate in a small lecture series about being homeless.

Alternative spring breaks have become so popular that some students compete to volunteer. For example, more than 230 students at Boston University missed watching the Super Bowl this year in order to camp out in front of the Student Activities Office for 24 hours, waiting to sign up for a spring break volunteer opportunity.

A move away from drunk and disorderly partying in spring break hot spots and toward more service-oriented, drug- and alcohol-free spring breaks is a welcome one to those who worry about alcohol abuse among college students. At their "College Drinking: Changing the Culture" Web site (www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) reports that in a year:

• 1,700 college students between the ages of 18-24 die from alcohol-related injuries, including motor vehicle crashes.
• Almost 600,000 college students aged 18-24 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol, and more than 696,000 students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking.
• More than 97,000 students aged 18-24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape, 400,000 students had unprotected sex, and more than 100,000 students reported having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex.
• Between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students said they tried to commit suicide due to drinking or drug use.

Spring break debauchery only enhances these already dire statistics. According to a recent American Medical Association poll of 644 women aged 17-35 who attend or had attended college, 83 percent of the women surveyed said that spring break trips involve more or heavier drinking than occurs on college campuses and 74 percent said spring break trips result in increased sexual activity that often involved unprotected sex. Ninety-two percent said it was easy to get alcohol on spring break, and 83 percent had friends who drank the majority of nights while on spring break. Eighty-one percent of the respondents supported the idea of requiring colleges to offer alternative spring breaks that do not include alcohol.

Spring break offers parents an important opportunity to discuss the consequences of excessive drinking with their college-age sons and daughters and to talk with them about alternative spring breaks. Break Away, a nonprofit organization that has been organizing volunteer trips since 1991, conducted a scientific impact analysis that concluded alternative break programs actually create more active citizens. Break Away participants have stronger intentions of voting and are more inclined to dedicate time to serving their communities in the years following their volunteer experience.

The NIAAA offers a special guide for parents and other helpful resources at their college drinking prevention Web site (www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov). Information on Break Away's alternative spring break programs can be found at www.alternativebreaks.org.

--Published March 19, 2007