An Important Conversation: Senior Fifth

In this Issue: As we approach the last home football game of the year, it’s time to talk about Senior Fifth.

I invited Jonah Neville, our new Assistant Director of Wellbeing, Substance Use, for a Q&A to help explain Senior Fifth to parents and families, and how we would like parents and families to help us influence student behavior.

Jonah, you are new to Wake as of this summer. Tell our Daily Deac-ers a little about your background in alcohol and drug prevention work with college students.

Thanks for having me, Betsy! I’ve been working the past four and half years in alcohol/other drug prevention work at Mississippi State University, and most recently at the University of Florida. I also serve as co-chair for the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) Alcohol and Other Drugs coalition; this is a group that helps guide the ACHA’s AOD prevention efforts for higher education professionals. Lastly, I’m originally from North Carolina, so it’s great to be doing the work back in my home state. 

What is Senior Fifth?

Senior Fifth is a dangerous activity that some seniors choose to do at the last home football game. Students attempt to drink a fifth of liquor – an entire 750 ml bottle! – between midnight and kickoff of the football game. For context, 750 ml is around 16-17 shots of alcohol.

When is this year’s final home football game?

Normally, students who choose to partake in Senior Fifth do so at the last home football game. However, our last home game technically is during the weekend of Thanksgiving. Therefore, our plans are geared around students engaging in this harmful practice in the next-to-last game, which is Friday, November 8 against Cal. Kickoff is 8 p.m. 

This game time could have both a positive and negative association. For students who don’t have class on Fridays, they would have a longer time to space and pace out the volume of their drinking, potentially reducing chances of acute heavy intoxication as well as allowing more time to eat, etc. On the other hand, students may delay their start to Senior Fifth until they get out of class on Friday and therefore put themselves at a high risk of getting overly intoxicated over a very compressed amount of time. 

And just to put it in very clear terms, the amount of alcohol in a fifth is 750 ml, which equals out to around 16-17 shots of alcohol. That is a LOT to drink.

What does Wake Forest do to discourage Senior Fifth?

Senior Fifth had become a ritual that was perpetuated from year to year within the student culture. This ritual is one we have been actively working to change over a number of years.

We have a robust, multifaceted, collaborative prevention and harm-reduction campaign in place to provide students with:

• language students can use to resist peer pressure
• increased knowledge about the dangers of alcohol and how to consume alcohol safely
• campus marketing that challenges assumptions that Senior Fifth is safe or universally accepted as part of our culture

The image below maps the numerous efforts that make up our Senior Fifth prevention campaign. We use a public health framework called the Socio-Ecological Model (SEM); SEM “understands health to be affected by the interaction between the individual, the group/community, and the physical, social, and political environments” (Israel et al., 2003; Sallis et al., 2008; Wallerstein et al., 2003). As you can see, we are working very hard to impact attitudes and behaviors at every level of our campus community.

Have we moved the needle in changing student behavior?

Yes, our Senior Fifth prevention campaigns have made an impact. Though some students continue to participate, there is growing anecdotal evidence that the cultural importance of Senior Fifth is trending downwards and that more students see it as a harmful, unneeded activity rather than an inevitable part of the college experience. You can see from the graph below that since 2015, there has been an overall trend that demonstrates a reduction in student drinking that required hospitalization.

What happened in 2018 that caused a spike in students needing medical treatment?

Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) is influenced by 4 key variables: sex, weight, amount of alcohol, and time. When there is a much shorter time between midnight and kickoff, this tends to result in higher BACs and therefore higher occurrences of students requiring medical intervention for intoxication.

In 2018, kickoff was 12 noon – which was 7.5 hours earlier than the prior year. When you compress the time in which students can consume a fifth of alcohol, that increases the likelihood of much higher BACs and risk to students’ health. This year, kickoff is at 8 p.m, which gives a longer time for students with no Friday classes to process and space out consumption of drinks; this would serve as a protective factor rather than all the drinking occurring in an acute, compressed slot of time. However, if a student who has Friday classes were to theoretically begin their Senior Fifth involvement after they finished class on that Friday, that would mean drinking all that alcohol in an even shorter amount of time, which is certainly a concern we have. 

What are parents and families able to do to help discourage Senior Fifth? 

Family members and loved ones have an enormous amount of influence on student behavior, especially alcohol use, even in a student’s senior year of college. For parents/family members of seniors, the call to action is this: talk to your senior! Whether that is overtly asking them not to participate in Senior Fifth, or talking about not engaging in drinking behavior that is harmful to them, it is important for parents and loved ones to express your expectations for your student’s behavior. Tell them that you want to ensure they make choices consistent with their safety and wellbeing. Your words matter! 

For families of all other class years, your call to action is to begin laying the groundwork now about high risk behaviors and Senior Fifth – and keep building on that conversation over time. 

Having parents and families as partners in this prevention work is critical. Thank you for all you can do to help encourage safe and healthy expectations for your student.