PACE Goals and Strategies

Our primary long-term objective: To decrease high-risk drinking and its negative consequences (violence, vandalism, property damage, sexual assault, academic failure) among undergraduate students.

Our basic approach is that while students do make their own decisions about their drinking, and should be held accountable for their behaviors and decisions, they act and make decisions within an environment that’s awash in messages to drink, and to overdrink.  Therefore, the two top directions for our work are:

1. Holding students accountable by clearly communicating our expectations to them about how they should act and treat each other and then enforcing our rules/policies when they violate expectations.  Peer accountability is particularly effective (as evidenced in the lower rates of problems from drinking seen in our residential learning communities).
2. Addressing environmental factors, such as those related to easy access to cheap alcohol and how alcohol and overdrinking are marketed to our students.

Successful strategies to reduce high-risk drinking have similar themes:  consistent messages for behavioral expectations, and consistent enforcement of consequences when expectations are violated; comprehensive approaches that work at many levels and “leverage points” within a campus-community environment.

PACE Accomplishments - 2008 (PDF, 36KB)

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To get involved with the PACE Project, contact us at pace@news.wisc.edu.
The Pace Project is coordinated by University Health Services,
the campus health clinic open to all current UW–Madison students.
Visit UHS at www.uhs.wisc.edu.