News Scrapbook 1982-1984

SOUTHERN CROSS MAY~~ 1983

Tackle Student Drinkin~ - . . t· s - occasional c s us police offi- midmght, three camp d t the cers-the only ones on uty a . Still its mdica ion . • ~;~~al~:ii~tuo~e~~1: 0 :;n~~~:1~

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rograms Aimed at Awareness Rather Than Abstinence

sitr;::1 1 rh;tFnPv:r~~t~~ft~itl;~~ also have alcohol ,educa I SDSU's effort has lacked cam• pus-wide coordmationetfiu:~~;t~ year-ever smce a pr ram's services director' t~e prf:ersity. rime mover-left t e un ~everal campus officials said. grams ·ty which has a I" . tion as "the party schoo m t·11 offers infrequent T minars to fraternities, soron ies ' reputa. San Diego s 1 . :id dorm residents.' It therapy sessions for the c alcoholics. . The most extensive 3 San Diego appears to be the ,.- year-old effort _at the private Um- ve~sityd~~~~ D~ega~ assortment of n~hops . a counseling program wor taff member assigned to and :te alcohol education ef- ~oo{ tsD students have an active or s, Pleaae aee DlUNJtlNG, Page 3 program in Efforts Continue . But the umvers1

h d their hands full ferrym~ ~ck students back to their

their dorms with several_sIX pac ointed to a need for action. body had really looked at the issu~ until th~ FogCut~er~i:~i said Warren OMeara, t e d intern in psychology who heade Watson's committee. While UCSD's acade~ic statur~ had grown rapidly dunng its 19 . ts approach to cam- year existence, 1 h d t kept us social problems a no p O'Meara and other campus pace: .d With the FogCutters offic1als sai · 1 al . 'dent educators sudden Y .re - mc1 , w ·t a minute. . ed •wen whoa. Ill ?'" 1Z • ' d to do. What else do we nee O'Meara said. Following the example .of more h 150 colleges and umvers1t1es t an d the country, UCSD has :r~:r:~~~~ how best to handle them. -t

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"We had students passmg ou mpus .. Hugh French, cam- ·th pus police chief, remembere t 1~nt di·sgust noting that one s u ' h. trol cars threw up in one of 1s pa . · as Still French was p.,ilosoph1cal . , ed the event It could he discuss . · II have been worse, he said; at co eges where similar events have been held students have died of .alcohol . • ·ng But campus adm1mstra.- po1som • dd tors-Chief French included-:- I not dismiss the FogCutte1s mc1dent as a case of college hiJmks. CSD' Instead, Jo~eph Watson, U s vice chancellor of undergradua~e affairs directed a campus Com~u - tee on 'Alcohol and Substance A use Education to mvestigate exactly what had occurred and why- . The committee's finding, The um- ·ty had a drmking problem. ve,J'1~e problem was clearly serious, Watson said-although probably no more so than that on most Amencan campuses. over ca , d

By LANIE JONES. Ttme Stal! Writer I t wk remcm..,ers tho e things w ere h

the campus police chief with some pain. "one of kids set out to

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tudents at all d

get d,runk " A year ago last Apr , s UC San Diego e their second apnua. PartY ' ii

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Pl,.,to b) Lany PhuL!!T tn ~,eg~ Stadium as more than 650 studen'.s received L O T Maher was busy last Sunday handing out

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In the event, authonz stu- tud nt governmert, about ~flcr dents gathered onE. Saturday noon on an outdoor patio. us hat There on a woodsy camp . is better'known for .serious ship than w_ild e~::?~~i/~:nd drank danced to a roe t nt alchol- countless gallons of: po ;ogCutter) c brew (the legen ary ho could and held contests to see w drink the most The resuh of this springt.1me exuber nee was hat, soon fter

were applied 10 theorized. "Justice 1s lie said but few would argue that things like soci:U legislation and civil rights laws "represent an undue mtrus1on of government legislating morality." THE BISHOP warned that citizens who cannot agree about what is right and wrong and who have lost all sense of personal moral responsibility ''are well on the way to being ungovernable." "It should be remembered that law is not something purely negative which is constantly forbidding, restraining and prohibiting. Properly understood and properly used, law should be a source of guidance and inspiration." ' ,... the area of justict ', he mo al e,

wn This u111versity has given such knowledge," hr

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Its strategies so far have included new alcohol counseling programs d ts a nd an "Awareness for stu en . _ Week" in April for the entire~ pus that featured lectu s to medi-

k i,latcc.l I a "half-truth." He admitted "on~ cannot create moral conviction by law, hut one can promote and support it by law '' As an example, he pointed toward the pastoi al on war and peac~ just adopted by the U.S. bishops . "In simple te~s, ~e are s ying that good ends ca~not JUSt1fy immoral means .. .We proclaim peace- making is not an optional commitment. It i. a requirement of faith." Those who claim that morality cannot be leg 1 lated would protest if that idea

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Cos Angeles &mes

Sunday, May 29, 1983/Part II

.....~INKING: Dramatic Incidents Spurred Action on Campuses

I ogram Extensive

Co tlaued from }'Int Pa.-e BACCHUS club, a local chapter of the national alcohol education orgam1.ation run b}' and for students. The concern about campus drinking mdicates a sh.irp shift m attitudes toward alcohol, on campus and off. Sev ral campus administrators agreed that 20 years ago, or even 10, occasional excessive student dnnking was considered part of the college trad1t1on, disruptive at times but generally best ignored. But by the late '60s and early '70s, as drugs replaced alcohol on campus, public perceptions began to shift, Id Thomas Cosgrove. associate dean of student affairs at the University of San Diego. Dru1-Problem "The drug problem focused pubhc attention on drugs as a problem," he said: the public reaction then was, "Well, everybody drinks. But, Good Lord! Drugs'' As drug u e began to decline in the mid- '70s, there came a new realization. "It may be, m retrospect, that that's about the time all the e various studies of alcohol on campus began to be generated," Cosgrove said. "People began to face the fact that alcohol, too, tS a drug." And not just any drug, educators said, but "the drug of choice.. among students and the general population. Dramatic incidents hke the FogCutter~ party also mobilized university administrators. At SDSU, for instance, the first alcohol workshops and educational films were offered soon after a 1979 mcident in which an 18-year•old freshman nearly died of alcohol poisoning. The youth won a fraternity's Mexican Night tequila "shooter" contest by consuming 24 shots of tequila before passmg out, said Douglas Case, SDSU's adviser to fraternities. The next day, when the still-comatose student had his stomach pumped at a local hospital, his alcohol content was found to be .37%, Case said. adding that a rating of .4% to .5% is usually lethaL Recent studies also have shown that student drinkmg has different characteristics from that m previous

decades. For one thrng, said USD's Cosgrove, students appear to be drinking at an earlier age and often are entermg college with expenenres m drmkrng. One of the first jobs of most campus alcohol education programs has been to find outiust how much experience. At the University of San Diego, for instance, a 1981 survey of 700 students showed that 95% - freshmen through seniors-drank. Of those, 8% to 10% mdicated they were "problem drinkers," that they consumed excessive amounts of alcohol, had had blackouts related to alcohol use, or that they had been arrested for driving while intoxicated. according to Gae Soroka, a USO special proiects coordmator who runs the college's alcohol program. She said the USO survey findings were consistent with those at other colleges. UCSDSurvey At UCSD, O'Meara ran hes own survey m November, 1982. The resulL~ from the 283 Warren College students who responded: -When students drank-usually on Frida} or Satur- day night in their dorms or apartments-they consumed an average of 3.29 alcoholic drinks: -Twenty-eight percent said they mJ.Xed alcohol with other drugs. most often marijuana or cocaine: -Thirt} percent said they had driven a car aft~r heavy drinking; -Thirty pPr ent knew of a fellow student who had problems drinking; -Sooy percent said they believed college life and pressures cause today's college students to drink. O'Meara also said his results were similar to national data. And they shocked some university officials just as . the FogCutter party had. Still, noted Vice Chancellor Watson. the incident and the evidence together led the alcohol abuse committee to focus on campus alcohol use in a new way. For the first time at UCSD, a campus committee addre~sed concerns about alcohol use and abuse with an

as an educational institution "it behooves us to provide them with information about alcohol." The guideline or "buzzword" about its use, he said, is "responsible drinking." ' At SDSU, fraternity adviser Case consciously soft- pedals his alcohol educational program. He offers films, talks and a true-false questionnaire on alcohol use (which students usually flunk) only if fraternities ask for them. "I tlunk it's better received when they don't see it pushed down their throat," Case said. "The whole design of the program is non-judgmental." His focus is also on responsible drinking or drinking problems, Case said. The word alcoholism is rarely used "because people think of skid row bums and so forth." On a campus of 30,000 students, Case's effort is not large-scale. He took his program to only three fraternities tlus school year. But, "I look at it this way," Case explained. "If we're successful in getting one individual from getting behind the wheel of a car when he's drunk, if we get people to stop and think, if we get someone who may have a drinkmg problem to seek assistance ...," it's worth il No Hard Data The impact of campus alcohol-education efforts 1s extremely difficult to measure. Agam and again college administrator11 said they could talk of impressions but not hard data. At both USO and UCSD, officials spoke of "a growing awareness" about drinking. "We have noticed students have the right jargon down," said USD's Soroka. "Students know what 'responsible use' is. And if a party is on campus (students may receive special permission to have alcohol on campus), they know how much they should have per student-no more than two drinks an hour and two to three drinks per person ... And they know to cut off the drinking at a certain lime. • Please see DRINKING, Page 5

explicit phtlosophy, and with a concept of involvmg the entire campus-students, faculty and staff-in solu- tions, Watson said. At the outset, the committee's goal was not to ban alcohol use from campus but to promote educated use. "We are not teetotalers," O'Meara stressed. "We are not trying to encoutage abstinence. That's ridiculous. But we want people lo know if you have a problem, here's where you can get help. If you don't know much about it, here's where you can get information." For a first-year program. the committee's efforts were ambitious. It studied 'campus alcohol - use pro- grams around the country through a scholarlv search of literature, and by contacting other campuses with model programs. In the university's counseling services, a therapy group was created for students who were children of alcoholics and thus considered high risks to become alcoholics themselves. The umversity also began its first student chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Week of Activities And, almost exactly one year after the FogCutter party, O'Meara's committee sponsored a week of activities. While the program was poorly pul)lic1zed, from 60 to 90 people a night,took breath and field sobriety tests administered in the campus pub by a UCSD police officer, O'Meara said. Several dozen professors, doctors and staff members also attended lectures on alcohol use and abuse. And, at the end of the week, more than 500 people danced to rock music and drank soft drinks at a "dry" TGIF party that replaced UCSD's regular beer-and- band party m the main gym. The point was to educate, not proselytize, O'Meara said. Other campuses take the same view. USD bars alcohol from its campus but assumes its students will drink elsewhere anyway. "Students don't p nd their entire time on campus," Cosgrove said. So,

Continued from Third Pare )";ut, Soroka continued, "Whether we have impacted t1.1dent drinking is questionable . . . Most research 6119\.-s there's really not a whole lot of impact because these are things beyond the university's control. The drinking age and society's attitude toward dcinking are beyond the scope of the university's control." Program• to Continue Campus officials said they find even their sparse results encouraging enough to warrant contmwng and expanding the programs. Officials from all three San Diego schools said they would like to plan stronger programs for faculty and staff as well as students. However, for budgetary reasons-and perhaps, what UCSD' O'Meara termed "resistance" from faculty and staff-those officials were not optimistic about pros- pects for broadening their programs. At SDSU, for instance, a fledgling campuswide education effort reportedly lost momentum a year after it began. The reason was that its instigator, Dr. David Bearman, student health services director, resigned in 1982 for another job. After a period without a full-time director, Bearman's replacement arrived this winter only to face threats of major budget cuts and layoffs in his division. "We were in sort of a beginning phase (in campus- wide alcotiol education)," said Melodee Arnold, a coun~elor and registered nurse who runs counseling programs for children of alcoholics at the student health services center. "Then the health services had all the financial cuts. It looks like it (the broad-based effort) is gomg down the tubes." Question of Time At USD, admmistrators believe their student educa- , lion effort is strong. But "in terms of a specific program for faculty we haven't gotten there yet. .. huppose it's just a question of time," Cosgrove said. At UCSD, administrators are enthusiastic about their ' first year of a ma)Or alcohol education effort. But its scope for next year is unclear at the moment. O'Meara's alcohol and substance abuse committee was temporarily disbanded in late April, after it sent UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson a series of recom- mendations for a permanent program. Among campus needs listed in the report were a thorough study of UCSD's policies toward alcohol, a confidential alcohol assistance program for all universi- ty employees (located away from UCSD's personnel office where a related program is now housed) and a counselor hired to coordinate and run programs for faculty, students and staff. Future Uncertain Atkinson this week still had not acted on the recommendations. Meanwhile O'Meara's doctoral in- ternship has run out, and it is not clear whether he will be hired at UCSD as an alcohol abuse consultant. "I haven't heard one word about what they're going to do," O'Meara said this week, sounding discouraged. Still, he added in a more cheerful tone, he believes the student program and the alcohol awareness week wiJl continue. "I feel you have to start somewhere and I've started. I'm still very enthused ... You just get into a thing called money." Vice Chancellor Watson agreed that budgetary limits probably will decide whether UCSD runs a cam- puswide alcohol education program next year, or whether the program will be confined to students. Also, he said, UCSD has a tradition of educating students in non-academic subjects such as alcohol use. But "with faculty and staff there has to be a mutual sort of willingness. ThPse things have to be done jointly and not so arbitrarily." Still, Watson asserted, there is no doubt that the university plans to continue alcohol education programs, for students in the dorms, in private counseling and with an alcohol-education committee reassembled in the fall. He and other campus admimstrators said this year's program has significantly reshaped student awareness about alcohol. "We're very enthusiastic about 1t We got something good started," Watson said, and JJ D plans to keep it going.

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