How to Tackle College Substance Abuse
Changing what students see as normative behavior when it comes to alcohol consumption can go far in decreasing high-risk conduct on your campus.
“If you can do some interventions which make a small change to the majority of folks on campus, what you’re doing there is changing the campus culture…you’re actually changing the environment rather than changing the individuals,” Reilly adds.
Change the Campus Culture
According to Roderick Shaner, the medical director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, “One of the most commonly cited contributors to substance abuse problems is immersion in a culture that is tolerant of, or even expects, heavy substance abuse.”
An effective college substance abuse prevention program, he says, will “create a culture in which binge drinking and drug use is neither normative nor promoted.”
In an effort to alter its campus culture, St. Cloud has sought to eliminate triggers from campus life that might affect students recovering from chemical dependency or other addiction issues.
St. Cloud does not allow root beer kegs or “mocktails” — mock cocktails — at campus events, and clubs are not allowed to give away cups as promotional items. In addition, gambling-related events are not permitted on campus.
The exception, says Hernandez, is mocktails that are provided with an alcohol education component by the university’s UChoose program. The program – a campus prevention effort focusing on the reduction of high risk alcohol use – utilizes empirically based theories and approaches to correct misperceptions about alcohol use on campus and reduce harm.
Data collected by UTK showed that students “thought [other] students drank a lot more than they actually did,” says Reilly. The result was that students often had a skewed perception of how much alcohol they should drink and how often.
“We did a high dose, multiple outlets social norming campaign to correct misperceptions of high risk drinking or correct misperceptions of how many people are partaking in it,” he says. The campaign resulted in a notable reduction of high risk drinking on campus, according to Reilly.
Regular Enforcement Results In Better Behavior
Data also showed that students who lived on the UTK campus did not see the alcohol policy being regularly enforced. Therefore, they did not take the policies as seriously as they should.<
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To change this, UTK remodeled its resident advisor (RA) training to include a segment on consistent enforcement.
“We wanted to look at it from the RA’s perspective,” explains Reilly. “They really don’t take the job — for the most part — to be policy enforcers. They want to be mentors and community builders.
“We obtained data to show that consistent enforcement would actually allow them to achieve the things that they wanted to achieve through being a RA, and inconsistent enforcement would subsequently do just the opposite.”
The results were positive and widespread, according to Reilly: “We had good data that supported that our students’ perceptions of enforcement went from about 50 percent up to about 75 percent since implementing that training.”
“Colleges have learned there are a number of things that help students make proper choices about using drugs [and drinking], and help them find effective help for substance abuse when they need it,” says Shaner.
One of the most important ways to effectively address the needs of students with substance abuse issues, he adds, is “to establish clear standards and expectations regarding the use of recreational substances on and off campus.”
Hernandez believes “the culture has changed with the enforcement of underage drinking,” on St. Cloud’s campus through cooperation with the city police and court system. In addition, campus security officers enforce campus alcohol policy while “acting as a liaison between…our campus and the city police,” he adds.
Move Past Prevention to Recovery
St. Cloud is currently working to implement a residential-based program for students in recovery, which could potentially be housed in a residence hall or an off-campus building.
“We are looking to do more support for recovery because I think the typical story is students will identify that they have a problem and…then get off campus treatment,” says Hernandez. “But once they’re done with that, it’s a difficult choice for them to return to campus – because of all the triggers, or previous lifestyle or just not having the resources or a safe place for them.”
The university formed a committee of administrators and faculty to tour colleges around the country that already have recovery programs in place. “We’re getting all the information from really successful programs, seeing what they have in common, what works for them, what we can translate here at St. Cloud,” explains Hernandez. “If we’re going to do this and open up a program for students in recovery we certainly want to do it right.”
Hernandez says he believes recovery housing should incorporate some type of 12 step program and counseling. In addition, he says, “you have to be very strict about making sure you’re dismissing students who begin to relapse… It’s important that the people there are committed to being sober and have stability in their recovery. Relapse is often part of recovery, but this isn’t the community for them.”
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