Dear Editor: I respect the grief Sarah Stellner’s parents are going through (Rob Zaleski’s column) but I need to address some of the things mentioned in the article.
Sarah’s mother, Cindy, says: “We knew she was partying, of course, because 95 percent of the college kids in Madison do that.” The false perception that everyone is doing it has been found to actually promote heavy and binge drinking among college students, and campaigns to correct this misperception have actually led to reduced drinking, as noted in your newspaper in a 2003 article. The truth is that most people and students vastly overestimate the amount of risky drinking going on and so promote more risky drinking.