Results from the school-wide drug and alcohol survey administered last semester by health educator Dawn Skop and the Department of Residence Life may prove that preconceptions about student drug use on campus are wide of the mark.The survey, which students received through their community advisers last spring, was designed to help gather information about all students' drug usage on campus in order to gain greater understanding of the issue.

"We had not done a survey like this before," Skop said. "We were hearing different things, students were saying there was a lot of heavy drug use on campus and other students were saying no, not at all. Staff, faculty, nobody really seemed to know."

The survey asked a number of questions, including students' use of alcohol and certain drugs, as well as their perceptions about their peers' use of these substances. The results showed dramatic differences between the actual usage and the perceived usage for both alcohol and marijuana.

"Sixty eight percent of students believe that their peers are drinking on a weekly basis; however, only 29 percent reported using alcohol once or twice a week," Skop said. "So the perception is that a lot of students are drinking weekly, when really it is only a small amount that are."

Skop added that students said that they believed only two percent of their peers abstained from alcohol, when in reality 30 percent of respondents claimed to be the poster child for sobriety, not drinking at all.

The numbers followed the same pattern in regard to marijuana use. According to Skop, students in information sessions say that marijuana use is rampant on campus; however, the results of the survey say otherwise.

Sixty-six percent of students reported no marijuana use within the last year of the survey, and 77 percent said they had not used marijuana within the past month. However, "only 6.3 students believe that their peers never use," Skop said.

Many students said they were particularly surprised to hear how few of their peers use alcohol and marijuana, despite of Brandeis' reputation for a subdued party scene.

Drinking exists at Brandeis, but it is not an all-encompassing element of the social scene, reports the survey. In general, students agree with this assessment.

"I don't think there is as much social pressure to drink and smoke in a social situation, Shapiro Hall Community Advisor Erica Weston '06 said when asked about how the survey results compared to her perception of campus life. "I have a lot of friends who go to parties where there is drinking and smoking and they don't [drink or smoke]."

The results of the poll might be attributed to the ages of respondents. Many of those who responded (297 individuals) were first-year students, while only 183 sophomores, 57 juniors and 36 seniors completed the survey.

"I think with those numbers it's probably skewed a little bit. If you have 900 some first -year students and you don't even get a third of that and that is the largest group," Director of Residence Life Maggie Balch said. "I think it is hard to say. I think that it gives us something to look at."

Skop said the first-year-dominated responses could slant results toward lower drug and alcohol use, especially since upperclassmen are more likely to be of the legal drinking age.

"On the other hand," she said, "you have first-years who have not smoked [marijuana] or drank or maybe not done anything [before college] for the first time being introduced to it." This, she said, could tilt results in the opposite direction.

"A lot of national studies have shown that [first-years] tend to abuse alcohol more than juniors and seniors who can go out and moderate by drinking more socially," Skop said. "You don't see the real heavy binge drinking in upperclassmen that you do with first-years."

The survey went on to outline the amount of drinking and marijuana smoking that takes place with those who do partake in such activities.

According to the results of last semester's survey, 70.3 percent of respondents consume alcohol "sometimes," 29 percent of respondents consume alcohol once or twice each week, and eight percent consume alcohol three or four times a week.

With marijuana, 34 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana within the past year, 13 percent of the respondents reported smoking one to three times per month and only three percent of students reported using between four and 10 times per week.

Nationally Brandeis is relatively sober school in comparison to the 2003 Core Institute study of 89 two-and four-year colleges and universities, which reported that 85.6 percent of college students had drunk in the past year as opposed to Brandeis' 70.3 percent.

Marijuana use at Brandeis, according to Skop's survey, is right on par with the national average. Brandeis usage comes to 34 percent, and the national average is 34.8 percent.

The survey will be redone again this year to see how much Brandeis students are using drugs and drinking in general, and to compare with last year's. The survey has an added function of being an administrative tool to facilitate students' education about the realities of drinking on campus

"There is a lot of alcohol on this campus; there is a lot of marijuana on this campus. I'm not naave enough to think that it doesn't happen frequently," Balch said.

"The purpose of doing a survey like this is to help us educate people better about their choices. We can learn something from it. We can figure out what we need to do to help students make choices, and I'm not saying they have to abstain from one or the other and I'm not saying that have to participate either. But I think we need to create an environment where each person can feel comfortable.