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Safe Party
Safe Party Initiative & Partners

The Safe Party Initiative aims to reduce problems related to college student drinking at parties in the Davis community. It focuses on creating safer party environments by building a closer sense of community between students and neighbors, promoting safety at parties, and increasing enforcement of alcohol-related laws and policies. This initiative is a collaborative effort between the City of Davis and the University of California, Davis.

The comprehensive initiative arose from a five-year, $6.9 million study of alcohol-related problems at 14 California universities, funded by the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA). UC Davis was one of seven participating campuses asked by the Prevention Research Center of Berkeley to develop a coordinated campus community strategy for reducing high-risk drinking and the problems it creates. The research project seeks to reduce violence, property damage, injury and car crashes that result from high-risk drinking and out-of-control parties.

Intervention Components

Social Responsibility Practices

  • Safe Party Campaign: launch of a Safe Party web site, use of media strategies and the distribution of informational materials to (a) potential party hosts, outlining best practices for safe and successful parties and explaining state and local alcohol service "social host" liability laws and (b) potential party guests, providing strategies to reduce high-risk drinking and to prevent violence, outlining alcohol-free events and local alcohol use, noise and nuisance laws, as well as campus policies.
  • Student-led Training on Responsible Partying: peer skills training to help students create low-risk party environments, improve personal party safety and reduce the potential for high-risk drinking, alcohol-related injury or illness, and violations of campus policies and alcohol use laws.

Neighborhood Community-building Practices

  • Neighborhood-Community Programs: creating and expanding neighborhood networks through block parties and other events to improve communications and relations among student and non-student neighbors, setting a community expectation of responsible partying.

Law Enforcement Practices

  • Weekend Alcohol Safety Patrols: individual and joint patrols by City of Davis and UC Davis police officers to assure neighborhood and traffic safety through enforcement of DUI, minor in possession, and other alcohol use laws and ordinances and to be available to intervene with intoxicated party guests before public behaviors escalate to violence or vandalism.
  • DUI Compliance Checkpoints: public, police-monitored roadside stations used to identify intoxicated drivers, enforce DUI laws and prevent injuries from alcohol-related crashes.
  • Minor Decoy Programs: police-monitored, underage decoys who test the compliance policies of retail alcohol businesses to prevent underage or "shoulder-tap" sales.

Implementation Principles

  • Each intervention strategy involves dissemination activities, media strategies, and a broad-based engagement by students, community members, campus representatives and city officials.
  • Public relations and media communications intended to reframe the problem from a police or campus disciplinary responsibility to a community health and safety responsibility.
  • This project benefits directly from participation in a federal evaluation process with on-going feedback of data into the intervention process as well as a summary analysis of the change resulting from the interventions.

Partners

This website is hosted and maintained by the UC Davis Student Health Services in collaboration with the following campus and community partners:

Campus

Community

 

Supported by the Prevention Research Center, with funding from the National Institutes for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

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