Some students don T-shirts proclaiming Gainesville a "drinking town with a football problem." But to a group of UF students, drinking is no joke.
A group of eight College of Health and Human Performance students submitted almost a dozen pages of alcohol-abuse research at a meeting of the the Community Alcohol Coalition Wednesday.
The group's research showed that the average intoxication level of the survey participants was .091. The legal limit is .08.
Part of the students' research included visits to Gainesville's midtown bars in July and August 2007, where they collected saliva and breath samples from nearly 500 people.
About one-fourth of the survey participants were younger than 21.
Fifteen percent reported using other drugs and a majority of them were also underage.
UF President Bernie Machen created the coalition in 2005 to address Gainesville alcohol abuse.
Members of the coalition include Machen, Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan, UF and SFCC administrators, and police.
The group applauded the students' efforts to get to the root of the city's alcohol-abuse issues.
Machen said in an interview after the meeting that the students' presentation proved what he's heard for years about Gainesville's alcohol problem.
"I think their research should clear up any doubts," he said.
He said he was surprised at the number of underage drinkers and the number of people who admitted to binge drinking and driving.
The goal of the coalition, he said, is to prevent student deaths caused by drinking.
"We're not anti-alcohol," Machen said.
"We're anti-binge and underage drinking."
Eugene Zdziarski, UF assistant vice president and dean of students, said using data to confirm that students drink underage, excessively and dangerously would help the coalition better address the issue.
Several factors contribute to the problem, and it will take a collective effort to fix it, Zdziarski said.
"Everybody's looking for the silver bullet or the single solution, and there isn't one," he said.
