The Chronicle of Higher Education - May 24, 2013

student-policy handbooks and enforced by in-
stitutional judicial processes and the campus
police.
But sexuality is far broader and more
complex than even that range of services
would indicate. Although the vast majority of
adults have sexual experience, most have little
formal education on the topic and rely on
fragmented information and broad cultural
scripts to guide their beliefs about both sexu-
ality and gender.
In some ways, the issue of student sexual
“Sexual health” is more than
the absence of sexual victimization,
sexually transmitted infections,
and unwanted pregnancies.
behavior parallels several decades of concerns
about alcohol on campus. In the past, cam-
puses took a piecemeal and often reaction-
ary position that encouraged students not to
drink; penalties were applied intermittently
and inconsistently. In response to cultural
changes in the 1980s, like the increase in the
minimum drinking age to 21 in all states and
the enacting of stricter drunk-driving laws,
colleges looked critically at their campus
cultures, including the systems and programs
that facilitated alcohol consumption, and
made changes. As a result, undergraduates
experience a different campus alcohol envi-
ronment today than they did 20 years ago.
Alcohol is not so easily available on campuses;
many Greek systems work with administra-
tions to deal with alcohol concerns; and treat-
ment programs are more readily accessible,
among other interventions.

Andrew P. Smiler is the author of Challenging
Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Pro-
miscuous Young Male (Jossey-Bass, 2012) and
a visiting assistant professor of psychology
at Wake Forest University. Rebecca F. Plante,
an associate professor of sociology at Ithaca
College, is the author of Sexualities in Context:
A Social Perspective (Westview, 2006) and
co-editor of Doing Gender Diversity: Read-
ings in Theory and Real-World Experience
( Westview, 2010).

What Happens When 2 Colleges Become One

RICARDO AZZIZ
EARLIER THIS YEAR, Moody’s Investors Service released its annual assessment of higher education in the United States, a report that viewed the sector’s hort-term outlook as largely
negative amid growing economic pressures.
The analysts, however, applauded the efforts
of a few states that were trying to merge or
consolidate campuses because such efforts
“foster operating efficiencies and reduce costs
amid declining state support.”
Georgia was among those states. Its Board
of Regents ratified four consolidations, in-
volving eight universities. As a result, I took
Frequently a shared
infrastructure can serve
a larger entity with little
or no expansion.
the helm of Georgia Regents University, a
new institution created through the consoli-
dation of Augusta State and Georgia Health
Sciences Universities. (A consolidation is two
organizations forming a third organization
while a merger is one organization taking
over another organization.)

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