Abstract
OUR JOURNEY BEGAN in 1985 when a team of students, faculty, and staff at Framing-ham State College (FSC) formed a committee to set clear standards, fair means of accountability, and an educational mission to address the issues of underage and irresponsible drinking. The committee made some bold decisions, including preventing the organization of a fraternity and sorority system, committing resources to prevention and education, and holding students accountable for every alcohol-related incident.
A comprehensive environmental approach is critical to addressing alcohol use by college-age students. Our approach involves an array of offices, individuals, and off-campus collaborations on education, prevention, and intervention. Once per week the chief of campus police reviews campus incidents with the dean of students, the assistant dean of students, the director of residence life, the director of alcohol and other drug services, the director of health services, and the director of counseling.
A critical aspect of intervention is clear accountability and minimum sanctions for individual students for each incident. Minimum sanctions include the following:
Loss of housing for one week (for residence students)
Loss of housing visitation privileges for sixteen weeks (for commuter students)
Loss of club, sports, or activities participation privileges for one week
Guardian notification (for students under twenty-one)
Disciplinary probation for one calendar year
Completion of an alcohol education intervention program
We respond to incidents quickly, working with the local police and hospital to ensure student safety. Students who fail a sobriety test are placed in protective custody; they spend six to eight hours in our town jail to sober up or are transported to the hospital for medical care if necessary. This intervention strategy required a firm commitment by the chief of campus police and the chief of the Framingham police.
Once released from the hospital or jail, students are restricted from campus until they meet with the assistant dean (off-campus students) or the director of housing and residence life (on-campus students), the director of alcohol and other drug services, and counseling center staff. The assistant dean or director of housing and residence life asserts that public intoxication is not acceptable in the educational environment. Then the director of alcohol and other drug services assesses the student for a substance abuse problem. Finally, a licensed social worker from our counseling center assesses the student for safety and mental health issues.
The substance abuse and mental health assessments result in recommendations to the assistant dean–director of residence life to readmit the student to housing with additional intervention or not to readmit if the student may cause harm to self or others. In extreme cases students have not been permitted to return to classes until a substance abuse intervention plan is in place.
Collaboration with town officials, local court officers, and probation officers provides the same level of intervention for FSC students off campus. The court requires students to participate in the campus two-step alcohol education intervention program. The first step, completed with a substance abuse educator–therapist, includes the following:
A pretest on basic alcohol education
An eighteen-page written alcohol assessment
An alcohol assessment based on a written report from, and discussion with, the student
Review of the incident with the student
Individual education on alcohol and drugs
Review of the student's answers to the pretest
Individual video instruction on alcohol poisoning and physiological effects of alcohol
Referrals for further action
The second step, completed with an alcohol educator, includes the following:
A social norms survey on individual alcohol use and perceptions of other students’ alcohol use
Individual instruction with a computerized alcohol awareness program
Review of the student's answers to the social norms survey
A posttest on basic alcohol education
Referrals for further action
The student must return to the court within three weeks with a letter from the alcohol educator signifying completion of the program to avoid further penalties.
Since the implementation of our two-step individual approach, we have reduced the number of students involved in a second alcohol offense by 69 percent in two years. We have seen a drop in intoxicated student behavior from forty-two incidents in 1998–99 to fourteen incidents in 2000–01. It is now rare to have an FSC student sent to the emergency room for alcohol poisoning.
In the early 1990s FSC assisted Framingham in developing a coalition for the prevention of alcohol and drug abuse. A host of collaborations with the police department, the board of selectmen, and other town officials has been highlighted in the creation of the Framingham Campus-Community Coalition for Legal and Responsible Alcohol Use (CCCLRAU).
CCCLRAU was instrumental in working with Framingham officials and alcohol license holders to require all alcohol servers to complete alcohol server education and register with the town. This law was initiated by the campus-community partnership, passed by the town's board of selectmen, enforced by the Fram-ingham police, and implemented through collaborative efforts between the campus and the community.
CCCLRAU is currently pursuing funding from the town hospital to conduct alcohol surveys measuring current use and perceptions of alcohol use by students at FSC, Framingham High School, and Keefe Technical School. Members of CCCLRAU predict that students will think their peers are using more alcohol than those peers actually are. CCCLRAU will employ social norms marketing strategies to demonstrate the real alcohol norms of the community. Framingham will be one of the first community-campus partnerships to implement the social norms marketing approach at a college, high school, and vocational school in one community.
A yearly evaluation of our comprehensive approach provides the opportunity to gain feedback from faculty, staff, and students on the effectiveness of our strategies. We were concerned that we wouldn't be able to enforce our policy that intoxication is unacceptable at FSC. However, we have discovered that our fears were unfounded. Over time, staff have spent less time dealing with intoxicated students.
Our approach to reducing underage and irresponsible drinking continues to evolve. In a time of computerized assessments and educational packages, it is important that educators use these mechanisms as tools, not as a replacement for one-on-one contact with students. Let us learn from our students in recovery, adapting the Alcoholics Anonymous slogan “One day at a time” to the campus context and making our motto “One student at a time.”