To Serve and Protect: Examining the Relationship between Selling Alcohol in College Football Venues and Negative Fan Behaviors

Currently, many university and college athletics administrators are weighing the decision to sell alcoholic beverages at on-campus sporting events. Prior studies have found negative behaviors related to binge drinking spike on college campuses during football gamedays. However, empirical research examining the effect of a policy change regarding the selling of alcoholic beverages in college athletic venues on fan behavior remains somewhat limited. The current study examined longitudinal campus police records at 12 institutions which have recently changed their in-venue alcohol policy. Results from the analysis confirm prior studies suggesting negative behaviors increase on home football game days. The decision to sell alcohol within the campus football stadium, however, has no statistical impact on the rates of deviant behaviors recorded by campus police

Volume 12.1 Complete Issue

File includes front matter, six articles, and back matter

November 16, 2023

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

Pitching Change: Micro-Community of Higher Learning

Being around sports growing up has given me some experiences that have shaped who I am today. Playing and watching sports is a common activity amongst my friends and family. These events spark engagement and camaraderie between us. The stadium in which these sports are played within are a key component to this engagement. They bring people together to enjoy and root on your favorite teams along side thousands of other fans. Stadiums today are becoming a remarkable instrument to generate communal spirit besides marketing, recruiting and hosting games for universities. The iconic design of these stadiums has become more complex. They have pushed the limits of technology and design however their iconic design is not without the parking wasteland that creates an island of a specific sports activities. I believe that KSU must consider student life for all students to better embed the sports facilities they intend to build by substituting the large amounts of parking surface area with a more productive program to foster a strong sense of communal spirit—an active micro community. A place where students, faculty and visitors share the festive and competitive nature of sports as well as their education at KSU. Research has time and again shown that baseball stadiums with stronger spatial connection to their social surroundings have become strong social hubs to serve their communities well. Kennesaw State University is regularly adding surface parking in an effort to accommodate its exponential growth. As well as building new sports facilities with a weak connection to campus communal and student activities. My project aims to design a new baseball stadium in KSU connecting the fragmented spatial pieces of the campus to foster a cohesive fabric of spatial patterns that should generate an active community of students. Supported by a mixed used developments and a retail spine. My thesis project (Baseball Stadium) aims to eliminate the wasteland of parking dead space and fragmented spatial patterns in KSU with program that pushes the spirit of live-work-play-study for student success—an immersive and vibrant micro community of students catalyzed by a Baseball Stadium—to bring spatial cohesion to the spatial fragmentation of our North Campu

Causal Determinants of College Success

The first essay focuses on alcohol access in college, which is an impediment to many students\u27 success. Alcohol sales to general seating at college football games has been broadly adopted despite results suggesting greater alcohol availability increases crime and college alcohol abuse. Using differences-in-differences, this paper estimates how allowing alcohol sales in college football general seating sections affects crime. Reductions in crime are found after sales are allowed. After sales begin, those under the age of 21 are still not legally permitted to purchase in-stadium alcohol, but are still affected by changes in other stadium policies or law enforcement strategies. Using this group to address unobserved confounders suggests the causal effect of increased legal alcohol access at games is reduced crime on home game days. Results suggest substitution effects matter for the relationship between alcohol access and criminal behavior, identifying a new empirical nuance to be heeded when making alcohol policies. The second essay focuses on financial aid for college. Merit-based financial aid programs are amongst the largest sources of financial aid for college, yet estimated effects may be biased by students sorting into treatment due to known academic cutoffs. This paper estimates how likely students are to meet minimum academic renewal requirements, in a state where sorting into treatment has been shown, by using an unmanipulated birthdate cutoff created by compulsory kindergarten entry laws. Fuzzy regression discontinuity shows being born slightly after the cutoff, 14 years before the college program begins, leads to a 49.6 percentage point (pp) increase in scholarship receipt. Difference in discontinuity estimates, accounting for potential relative age and season of birth confounding, find students are 24 pp more likely to exceed GPA and completed credits renewal requirements. The results suggest GPA or credits thresholds are equally effective, advancing the literature on behavioral aspects of large merit-aid programs and informing their design. The third essay focuses on peer groups and non-cognitive abilities. Employers value non-cognitive abilities as much as cognitive ones and non-cognitive abilities have significant bearing on education, labor market, health, and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper estimates how peers affect non-cognitive skill formation, including communication, leadership, and attitude. Students at the National Outdoor Leadership School are conditionally randomly assigned to groups, meaning they are randomly exposed to different levels of peer ability. Being assigned to peers with higher self-rated non-cognitive ability causes a reduction in self-rated communication and leadership by 0.1 standard deviations, but not attitude. The largest results are from females rating themselves lower in communication and leadership. This work suggests strong peers are not an effective way to bolster non-cognitive ability for college-aged individuals and that peers may contribute to less women in leadership positions

Data analysis applied to healthcare

The Emergency Department (ED) is one of the essential departments of any hospital, often open 24 hours a day is the service that most provides patients to a hospital. Advances in medicine have resulted in an increase in average life expectancy and, consequently, an ageing population, which will lead to an increase in affluence and need for healthcare, so it is of extreme importance that the hospitals are able to carry out effective management of available hospital resources, so that the quality of service (QoS) it can offer to patients is not compromised and there are no cases where a patient cannot be admitted due to lack of beds, or is not treated due to lack of medication, among others. Hospitals today are aware of the growing importance of data analysis. Data Mining techniques allow extracting knowledge from the big data stored in their computer systems in the form of electronic health records (EHR). This analysis of big data produced by a hospital will, to some extent, help the hospital management to better manage these resources to improve its services, improving the quality of its service, making the patients more satisfied, which can contribute to a healthier society. The author of this thesis will analyze data from an ED provided by an hospital in the Lisbon region, processing the data and then performing a descriptive analysis that allows us to draw conclusions regarding the time a patient spends in the hospital (Length of Stay), among other metrics, taking into account several factors that may influence it, and then perform a predictive analysis of the Length of Stay in order to help the hospital in the decision-making process.O serviço de urgências é um dos departamentos mais importantes de qualquer hospital, muitas vezes aberto 24 horas por dia é o serviço que mais fornece utentes a um hospital. Posto isto, e perante uma população cada vez mais envelhecida, devido ao aumento da esperança média de vida, irá fazer com que a afluência a estes serviços venha a aumentar, assim é de extrema importância que o hospital seja capaz de realizar uma gestão eficaz dos recursos hospitalares disponíveis, de modo a que a qualidade de serviço que este pode oferecer aos utentes não seja comprometida e não se venha a verificar casos em que um utente não pode ser internado por falta de camas, ou que não tenha quarto disponível e tenha de ser colocado no corredor, entre outros. Hoje em dia os hospitais com vista na possibilidade de análise de dados através de técnicas de Data Mining, que permitem a extração de conhecimento a partir das grandes quantidades de dados (Big Data) guardadas nos seus sistemas informáticos sob a forma de registos médicos eletrónicos (Eletronic Health Records). A análise da Big Data produzida por um hospital vai permitir um olhar um para estes números e de certa forma ajudar a gestão do hospital a gerir melhor estes recursos de modo a melhorar os seus serviços, melhorando as condições dos utentes, deixando estes mais satisfeitos. O autor desta tese irá analisar dados reais de um serviço de urgências fornecidos por um hospital da região de Lisboa, tratando destes dados e de seguida realizando uma análise descritiva que nos permita retirar conclusões em relação ao tempo que um doente passa no hospital (Length of stay), entre outras métricas, tendo em conta vários fatores que o possam influenciar, e de seguida elaborar uma análise preditiva do Length of Stay com vista a ajudar a apoiar o processo de tomada de decisões pelo hospital

A comparison of traffic, parking, and pedestrian control strategies for universities on football gamedays

In recent years, fan support and interest in division I-A college football has increased. Increased attendance, financial support from donors and alumni, and the commercialization of college football programs have transcended to the building of larger stadiums or additions to existing structures. This increase in stadium capacity in turn relates to an increase in traffic congestion on campus, a greater demand for nearby parking, and escalation in pedestrian movement adjacent to the stadium. Due to these aforementioned items university officials, police departments, and traffic engineers have implemented different plans to manage vehicular and pedestrian traffic along with parking demands for numerous football facilities throughout the nation. This study focused on identifying and analyzing what procedures are effective to manage traffic, pedestrians, and parking on a selected number of college campuses as well as strategies that have proven to be inadequate. In a national survey, 110 university police chiefs and university parking administrators were asked to assess their gameday traffic, pedestrian, and parking plan for their respective campus. From these surveys, an extensive list of tools and strategies for gameday traffic management was developed. Data were also compiled to illustrate which strategies have proven to be effective and ineffective for varying university types (public or private), stadium location, and whether the stadium is an on- or off-campus facility

Profiling Tourists for Balanced Utilization of Tourism-Based Resources in Kenya

Kenya is predominantly a nature-based tourism destination with wildlife (concentrated in the southern part of the country) and beaches (along the Indian Ocean) accounting for over 85% of the international tourists visiting the country. Other attractions are based on the physical landscape of the country and the culture of the people. Unfortunately, the full potential of culture-based attractions has not been exploited. The over-concentration of tourism activities in wildlife protected areas and on the coastal zone has had inherent problems that include severe environmental degradation. The less visited attractions stand the risk of neglect and could be eroded from the nation’s heritage with time. There is need to diversify tourism activities and spread them to other parts of the country by putting more emphasis on non-traditional ones such as cultural excursions. This research profiles tourists based on their preferences as assessed from the number of days they spend at different attraction sites. By associating the characteristics of tourists with various attractions, consumer preference profiles were established. Length of stay, presence of children, travel party size and gender are some of the significant factors that determined the profiles. Profiles can be used in encouraging proportionately more tourists with greater affinity for non-traditional attractions. Besides gender, other factors such as socio-economic status and whether one is travelling as a couple or not, turned out to be significant variables in influencing the resulting expenditure levels.Tourist profiles, Attractions, Culture, Expenditure, LISREL, Kenya

A POSSIBLE RESEARCH METHOD OF IMPROVING PERFORMANCE CAPABLE KNOWLEDGE IN YOUTH BASKETBALL BY APPLYING COMPLEX SPORT CONDITIONING PROGRAM

From the aspect of the energy management, today’s basketball player profile can be divided to four resources: physical, mental, spiritual and emotional (Woods, Jordan, 2010). We intended to observe the physical and mental part of this system. In every age category the athletes must increase their current potentials and reach the master or expert level (Baracskai,2007). Our research supervised the special basketball demands and the implementations to a training program that could help us to get a correct picture what, when, whom, how, where and why to teach (Winter, 1997). We researched the game performances as the ingredients of competitiveness based on a research of BSMPG (2010) that broke down the game and gave us exact scientific data of the modern basketball game. Purpose of study. Evaluate of every scientific hypothesis. Observing a special conditional program that is used yearly for a men university basketball team. The main goal of our research is to analyses the common effects of these programs for the game performances of the players. Understanding the sports carrier profiles of the participants regarding to their game performances. We’d like to find the details of the improvement of the game performances with a new methods that will separate the team and individual parts of the training process. Our hope is that our results, findings will be useful for planning the basketball practices. We look for the answers which practice topics, drills, tests, types and methods are the most effective to increase the special game performance in this model. Methods. We looked for the answers to why and how questions with our descriptive research methods. We guaranteed the validity of our work to choose our model systemically. We followed a longitudinal and panel investigation to guarantee the proper tests data. The data were analyzed statistically with ANOVA, regression, T probe. We have also used some expert explanation from the gathered data. Hudl video analyzer program. Results. The number of the high intensity sprint increases with the more ball possessions. (56/game, every 43-45 sec). The maximal vertical jumps of the players are predictable with the sum of the field goal attempts + blocks + rebounds (cc.10%). The defensive footwork is only 28 % of the playing time of a player. Conclusions. The longitudinal investigation was reasonable because the goals and the programs must be changed within the yearly practice plan. The teaching methods depends on the changes of the offensive strategy of the team. The more information we have about the physical and mental resources, the effective practice plan can be designed. A competitive conditional program can be properly designed that will consider the significant variants due to our findings. There is a significant connection between the performance of the practice program and the game performance

How do Bills fan motivations to attend home games relate to their feelings about the fan experience?

The purpose of the research was to examine why Buffalo Bills fans come out to games, and how that further affected their individual experience. The importance of the research was critical because the results of the surveys were sent to the Buffalo Bills, to potentially use to help guide decisions which have impacted the Guest Experience positively at New Era Field. With a continued push for enhancing the guest experience positively, the importance of the research was critical due to the potential use of the data being collected to make executive decisions for the organization as a whole. It’s been known that there have been many issues with the fan experience at New Era Field, as arrests and ejections have been a part of the culture with Bills fans in the past. It’s also known, that the NFL has taken part in marketing campaigns to improve the fan experience, as tailgating has brought attention to the league through arrest records. The method used to help draw conclusions were stratified random sampling methods through the administration of a survey through Qualtrics. Descriptive and inferential statistics were both used to further examine significantly different variables in the study. It was determined that Bills fan motivations differentiated among gender, as gender provided an outline of significantly different statistics within the study. It was found that Bills fan motivations aligned mostly towards in game entertainment that includes music, fantasy updates, mascot appearances, pre-game tailgate and family inclusion at games. Despite these being the most significant points, there was also a huge curve to the results in relation to new tailgating methods and pre-game methods that have been used in the past at the stadium. These methods used by the Bills were the Billevard, Fan Zone and Tailgate Guys being added to pre-game tailgate festivities. The information was determined important because of the impact the results had on decisions made for the fan experience. With continued research and plan development made to impact the experience at the stadium, the results found have helped strengthen research to reach the best outcome for the organization