Author: Emily Phillips
This year Oxy observed National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week from Oct. 18-24. Educational programs for this year’s Alcohol Awareness Week were sponsored by Emmons Health Center and Residence Life and Housing Services (ResLife), as opposed to the broader coalition that ran events last year.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, and more than 97,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. Additionally, 25 percent of college students polled reported academic consequences of their drinking, including missing class, doing poorly on exams and receiving lower grades overall.
“It’s not just Occidental College. All colleges in some manner are engaging in the issue of alcohol use, and alcohol abuse,” said Director of Counseling at Emmons Matt Calkins. “It’s a growing concern for the student body in terms of alcohol-related deaths, intoxication and hospitalization.” According to the 2008 Campus Safety Crime Report, there were 36 reported alcohol policy violations on or near campus, which can include possession of an open container of alcohol in public spaces, underage possession or consumption of alcohol, and driving under the influence of alcohol.
While Oxy’s participation in Alcohol Awareness Week last year included a wine tasting, beer goggles and a golf cart obstacle course, because of a lack of time and resources, this year’s programming was very limited. According to Office of Student Life (OSL) Departmental Asst. Genaro Cabrera, the OSL sponsored Alcohol Awareness events last year, but did not do so this year.
The Athletics department had a viewing of the film “Haze” for returning athletes in September and required first year athletes to attend the orientation Alcohol Awareness program, but did not sponsor any events for Alcohol Awareness Week.
Last year, Emmons held a quad-sit, handing out literature that employed a harm-reduction approach to alcohol consumption, which emphasizes drinking safely rather than advocating for non-consumption.
“By harm-reduction, we mean, rather than saying ‘don’t drink because its bad for you,’ we’d instead say, ‘if you choose to drink, slow down the number of drinks you have, eat before drinking, have a limit in mind when you start drinking,” Youngblood said.
However, because of the outbreak of H1N1 on Oxy’s campus, Emmons has had little time to coordinate events for this year. Instead, they provided Resident Advisors (RAs) with educational materials concerning alcohol awareness for hallspreads and poster-making. According to Assistant Director of Living and Learning Communities Maureen Regan, RAs coordinated primarily “passive programs,” including bulletin boards, information given out at Hallspreads, bathroom stall postings and other similar programs.
“It’s a way for students to get the information where maybe they want to seek it out, but they don’t want people to know they’re seeking it out,” Regan said.
Youngblood and Calkins believe more needs to be done than passive programming to educate Oxy’s students about how to safely and legally consume alcohol. “It has a place, but it is not enough,” Calkins said of passive programming.
“The thing is, I sat out in the quad for last year’s Alcohol Awareness Week, and it was dead,” Youngblood said. “There wasn’t a lot of student traffic.”
According to Youngblood, programming for alcohol awareness cannot be as effective as it needs to be if students are not engaged in alcohol awareness issues. The lack of interest in past years’ events is evident when talking with students about these issues.
“I didn’t personally attend any of the events,” Hilary Olsen (sophomore) said. “I do think it is good to continue to emphasize the dangers of drinking alcohol [. . . ] however, for the most part I think that many students have heard the same information and stories about alcohol over and over and that this repetition makes it boring.”
“I don’t remember an alcohol awareness week, I didn’t even know it occurred,” Eva Zaret (sophomore) said.
Similarly, the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) sponsored an educational event about alcohol use and abuse in September, but had difficulty getting the rest of the Oxy community involved.
“We only had about 20 students show up, but that is to be expected with an alcohol awareness event,” SAE President Thomas Whitacre (junior) said. “I do not think students are interested in alcohol awareness, but it is an important issue on Oxy’s campus.”
“It’s challenging to figure out what is going to resonate with students and how to engage them in a topic like alcohol use,” Calkins said.
Youngblood and Calkins suggest that a more cohesive program would be much more effective in addressing alcohol abuse on campus, and that one of the main problems in coordinating educational events is that Oxy does not have a Health and Wellness Educator. With a core staff of only five full-time people, it is difficult for Emmons to organize events.
“Oxy really needs someone who is a dedicated Health and Wellness Educator; someone who can actually make health and wellness activities happen” Youngblood said. “I think it would be so much more powerful if it was more coordinated.”
However, efforts are being made to address alcohol abuse at Oxy. The Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) Task Force was developed last fall to discuss Oxy’s alcohol policy. It includes students and faculty from various departments, and will ultimately be made up of 18 to 20 members of the Oxy community. The task force found that the stakeholders in Oxy’s alcohol policy had a different interpretation of alcohol abuse, and of how Oxy’s alcohol policy should be administered and enforced. Thus, they concluded that more discussion is needed.
In the mean time, Youngblood and Calkins believe more can be done to engage students in alcohol awareness. For instance, Oxy does not have health education classes as part of the curriculum, whereas other schools do.
“That’s something where you could actually do direct teaching and instruction, and provide the time to an audience that has to be there. Instead, we try to get this information into Hallspreads, or sit in the quad,” Youngblood said.
In addition to educational events, ResLife, OSL and Emmons have been working to provide alternative activities to alcohol use. However, Youngblood and Calkins explain that providing alternatives to drinking can be very difficult. “There’s no easy answer, and we’re not suggesting for the college to go dry, because that’s not going to solve anything,” Youngblood said.
“Alcohol use is a very strong culture among young adults, especially on college campuses,” Calkins said. “It’s a combination of prevention-based education and guiding young adults towards other things they can do that are equivalent in terms of the experience of drinking.”
According to Haines RA Nicole Dedic, last year’s RAs planned a number of alternative events like Broomball, an L.A. Kings hockey game, a few L.A. Dodgers games, a trip to Griffith Observatory, a trip to the Rose Bowl Flea Market, in-door skydiving and a Franz Ferdinand concert, among others.
“This year, Residence Hall staff has worked arduously to provide events like taking residents to Knott’s Scary Farm, the Eagle Rock Music Festival and more,” she said.
Despite the lack of active programming for Alcohol Awareness Week, all departments encourage students to seek out any information or help that they need regarding the alcohol policy or alcohol use.
“If students are interested in late-night programs or alcohol awareness, they can always seek out our office. They can come speak with me, or send an e-mail to ResLife if they’d like to remain anonymous,” Regan said. “If they have concerns about themselves or a friend and they’re not sure where to go for help, that’s what we’re here for, so they should not feel afraid
to seek us out.”
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