In every first-year dorm and every campus building are the “When Whitties drink” posters. These posters, created by the Associate Dean of Students/Student Programs Office, use data from the Lifestyle Choices Survey conducted by the Office of Institutional Research. They may be there to promote healthier behavior, but more often than not, the conversations they provoke concern how accurate the statistics actually are.  

Neal Christopherson, director of Institutional Research, suggests that student mistrust of the statistics is based on personal perception of drinking at Whitman and not the straight facts.

“The survey and posters are guided by social norms theory … People remember the guy from their section who drank too much and threw up in the stairwell, but might forget that he only did it once or twice the entire year, and forget that while he was getting drunk there were five others from the section out somewhere not drinking, or studying or on a trip with their sports team,” said Christopherson. “When asked to estimate the amount of drinking for their section (as a whole), their memory will go to the puking guy and overestimate. We remember the extreme behavior, and it shapes our perceptions of the whole.”