“I’m this girl who’s drinking and getting into trouble”: a feminist analysis of alcohol-related arrest narratives of undergraduate college women

This study was designed to explore and better understand how students who identify as women describe experiences of having been arrested and briefly incarcerated for an alcohol-related offense such as public intoxication during their college years. This qualitative study used narrative inquiry methods to understanding how the women told the story, and later processed a unique collegiate experience in the context of their identity formation during an intensive developmental period in their lives. In order to better understand the possible elements of their identity development as students, theories of college student development provided a useful framework for understanding. Because this study focused on the voices of women, and to better understand any power dynamics present in the stories, a feminist framework was used to help the researcher better understand and interpret power dynamics present in the stories. Themes that emerged across their stories illustrated the ways the women had to navigate through organizational, social, and familial relationships during and after their arrests, as well as negotiate intense and even traumatic impacts on their emotional and mental health needs, and conscious and unconscious ways that gender and power dynamics complicated the arrest experience as told by the women. The findings provide higher education administrators and researchers a window into the storied experiences of an understudied yet commonplace policy and practice for handling the complex public health issue of college student high-risk drinking. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.