On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day — traditionally one of the most raucous and inebriated celebrations in the college town of Chico — civil and university officials discussed their perennial concerns about student alcohol abuse with a national expert.

Holy Cross Father Edward A. Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame, met with the group March 16 on the campus of California State University, Chico, prior to a talk that evening to Notre Dame alumni living in Northern California.

“I don’t think there’s any panacea,” he cautioned, as he talked about devising a holistic strategy in which government, business and university officials work together with students to avert the kinds of alcohol-related tragedies that have occurred at colleges throughout the country.

Father Malloy knows well the struggles that universities face in thwarting excessive drinking, a problem that has become endemic on most campuses. An ethicist by training, he chose substance abuse as an area of special concern 16 years ago when he became president of the “Fighting Irish” university in South Bend, Ind.

He has served on several national committees, including President George H.W. Bush’s council on drugs. Currently he is co-chair of the subcommittee on college drinking of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and chairs the National Commission on Substance Abuse and Sports.

Father Malloy said that research shows three red-flag areas that warrant concern.

“The evidence is overwhelming that campuses with a high ‘Greek’ presence have more problems,” he said, noting that hazing rituals and a party culture at sororities and fraternities often have led to tragic consequences.

First-year students are more likely to overindulge as they cope with transitions, and are at higher risk.

Schools with large athletic programs, and the major events that come with them, have greater problems with excessive consumption, he said.

Father Malloy emphasized that women, who don’t metabolize alcohol as quickly as men, almost always lose “drinking contests” and may end up victims of alcohol poisoning.

“Transitions are hard,” he said, acknowledging that college students face difficulties that sometimes lure them into risky behavior and poor decisions.

He said that he hoped “in that isolated moment when they’re trying to fit in or be popular, that they don’t die or do something they’ll regret the rest of their lives.”

Father Malloy advises students to look for “places to belong,” whether in athletics, religion, student government, dramatic arts, or any campus group where they will find “like-minded questers.”

He also issues a simple directive to freshmen: Don’t eat alone. That reinforces loneliness and isolation, he said, while a shared meal is a natural social event that draws them into the larger group.

In an interview with The Herald in Redding March 17, Father Malloy talked about parents’ concerns in trying to steer their pre-teens and teen-agers away from drugs.

The first challenge parents have is to recognize the cultural realities that exist at a younger age, he said. They should be alert to signals without being preoccupied by them. But he said parents should not be naive either.

“If kids are active in a productive way the risk will be lessened,” he said. “The child interested in a variety of activities will be a healthier child.”

Parents often are disconcerted by the behavior of other adults who serve alcohol to teens, Father Malloy noted, saying that they would rather have their children drinking at home than out on the streets.

“The behavior you model is a big component,” he said, noting that “kids pick up quickly what the established standard is.”

Father Malloy said that teens often know that their behavior is on a risky downward spiral and want someone to intervene, even if they don’t verbalize that desire to their parents. If a problem develops, families are confronted with deciding how to deal with it.

“Sometimes ‘tough love’ is the only way,” he said.

In discussing Catholic education, Father Malloy said that some of the 230 Catholic colleges and universities nationwide are well-funded, while others struggle financially to remain open. But overall he sees “a very bright future.”

He said the most successful Catholic universities share certain traits: a lively worship life in ministry to students and the surrounding community; a curriculum that taps into “the richness of our Catholic intellectual heritage”; a focus on cultivating lifelong habits of service to others; and an emphasis on specific areas in which the institution excels, and which establish its identity.

The social activism that marked Catholic colleges a generation ago still is prevalent, he said, although students usually are not as politically involved as those who graduated in the 1960s and 1970s. Service learning remains an important component of any Catholic education. Father Malloy noted that students embrace diverse causes, such as the quality of inner-city neighborhoods, tutoring disadvantaged youth, and care for the elderly and homeless.

“We don’t want our graduates to be isolated or indifferent to the world around them,” he said.

Catholic elementary and secondary schools that are flourishing around the country have good leadership, parental involvement, a safe school atmosphere, a rigorous curriculum, and “sufficient extracurricular activities so that the wholeness of the individual comes forward,” Father Malloy said.

These schools provide formation through worship and religious studies that, he said, “get youth to recognize the connection between values and the behavior they engage in.”

Catholic educators need to expose students “to the wondrous array of stories about individuals and the central mysteries of Christian life,” he said. “Our youth want to be inspired, they want to be motivated. And there’s no better place to do that than in a well-run Catholic school.”

Father Malloy studied at the University of Notre Dame, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and a master’s degree in theology. Vanderbilt University, where he completed a doctorate in Christian ethics in 1975, honored him in 1998 by establishing a chair in Catholic studies in his name.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1970. A full professor in the department of theology, he has been a member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1974.

In spite of his hectic schedule, he teaches an honors seminar each semester to first-year students. The 18 multinational students in this semester’s class will read eight novels, review two films and write 11 papers.

“I never use the same material twice,” he said.

The self-imposed restriction requires him to read avidly, an activity he especially enjoys on the long cross-country trips that come with his job.

If a university president who teaches is rare, perhaps even rarer is one who maintains his residence in a student dormitory, as Father Malloy has done for nearly 21 years.

“But I’m buffered,” he said.

His room is next to a chapel on one side and to a faculty-occupied room on the other, which diminishes the din of dorm life.

But being part of the vibrant student-faculty mix at Notre Dame has a definite advantage, he said: “It helps keep you young.”

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