Alcohol abuse continues to be a major concern on most college campuses and within intercollegiate athletics departments. But just as in the general student body, there are many student-athletes making healthy, safe and responsible decisions.

Student-Athletes Taking Active Responsible Roles (STARR) is an innovative approach to addressing issues of alcohol abuse by highlighting the responsible behavior of the majority. The goal of the STARR social norming campaign is to correct inflated misperceptions that most student-athletes abuse alcohol. By presenting the true norm -- the majority doesn't abuse alcohol -- at-risk students such as incoming freshman are less likely to abuse alcohol.

The STARR campaign employs a multimedia approach that presents collegiate student-athletes modeling and promoting low-risk alcohol use behaviors. The multimedia campaign will use a Windows-based screen saver and an interactive software program (STARR-MVP) that will be installed on the hard drive of computers in labs or other intramural networks of participating institutions.

Institutions will send representatives to the NCAA national office for an orientation, participate in Internet-based assessments of student-athlete behaviors, receive a site visit to install the STARR-MVP program and receive consultation on how to develop campus-specific print media.

Student-athletes at pilot institutions will participate by providing data to create print media reflecting positive majority behaviors. These student-athletes also will be asked to join with student-athletes across the country in a national print media campaign to emphasize the message that the majority of student-athletes make responsible choices about alcohol use.

The Division III governance structure has approved funding of a STARR pilot project at eight institutions. The two-year pilot projects will be fully assessed for impact on the issue of alcohol abuse.

Pilot institutions will receive $15,000 over the two years of the project for staffing support and to cover the costs of the print media campaign. The NCAA will cover costs associated with training, consultation and installation of the computer program.

Institutions will receive the STARR grant application by April 30 as part of the Division III initiatives membership mailing. The grant application deadline is June 29, 2001. For more information, contact Mary Wilfert at the NCAA (mwilfert@ncaa.org).