“When you have to work with people in what is a long-term thing, it is not easy.
We have made it this far. We will succeed.”
Linda Major, director of NU Directions
Local groups tackle binge drinking
ABUSE from page 1
But members of a 65-member
campus-community coalition are con
fident they can reduce high-risk cam
pus drinking patterns by 25 percent
before fall 2003.
Why?
Because they have a plan.
Everything matters
In September 1998, after receiving
a five-year, $700,000 grant to use as
ammunition, UNL began to wage a
war against excessive student drink
ing.
The grant, awarded by the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation’s A Matter
of Degree program, based in
Princeton, N.J., provides money for
programs to increase awareness, edu
cation and law-enforcement efforts to
combat underage and high-risk drink
ing on the UNL campus.
“The grant is allowing us to bring
interested parties together to find cre
ative solutions to problems,” said NU
Directions Director Linda Major. “It
has provided a large amount of energy
- campus and community.”
NU Directions, a campus-commu
nity coalition consisting of university
officials, business leaders, students,
parents and UNL faculty members, is
trying to create a campus culture that
supports responsible, low-risk drink
ing, including abstaining from drink
ing all together:
The group established a first-year
planning budget of $100,000, Major
said. The remaining grant money will
be divided among the group in
$150,000 increments in the next four
years.
“I think it is a dangerous time for
18- to 20-year-olds and drinking” said
Robert Jergensen, owner of P.O. Pears,
322 S. Ninth St., and coalition mem
r
ber. “We now have the opportunity to
influence students and their percep
tions about alcohol.”
Strategic moves
Preparing to make an impact on the
university binge-drinking scene, NU
Directions would like to cut in half the
instances and prevalence of high-risk
drinking.
“We are not about prohibition,”
Major said. “We are, however, about
responsible, low-risk drinking.”
With five committee groups - edu
cation and information, policy,
enforcement, social environment and
neighborhood relations - NU
Directions spent this year looking at
ways to reduce high-risk drinking
among university students.
Chris Linder, NU Directions stu
dent chairwoman, said students have
continued to play a key role in the
implementation of the grant.
“The plan is the result of some stu
dent propositions,” Linder said.
“Students have had an integral role
with the project”
The coalition has identified and set
goals in the following areas:
• Education and information,
including correcting misperceptions
and promoting awareness of risks
associated with binge and illegal
drinking, and promoting campus
based substance-abuse treatment ser
vices.
• Creating policy to reduce high
risk marketing practices, the use of
false identification and the prolifera
tion of liquor licenses. High-risk mar
keting includes advertised drink spe
cials such as penny pitchers, all-you
can-drink for a flat fee deals and ladies
nights, where women get big drink dis
counts.
• Enforcing institutional policy as
appropriate.
UNL group uses education
to fight abuse of alcohol
ByIevaAugstums
Staff writer
A group ofUNL students cares for the well-being of
their peers, and hopes their efforts will convince other
University of Nebraska-Lincoln students to do the same.
Project CARE - Creating Alcohol Responsibility
through Education - is a program that provides informa
tion to UNL students about the use and abuse of alcohol
and other drugs.
“We educate students in what we like to call a fun
way - games, skits, presentations,” said Brett Stohs, a
sophomore mathematics major and Project CARE edu
cator. “We don’t just get in front of people and say, ‘Don’t
drink.’ We just want them to think and drink responsibly.”
Stohs, along with seven other UNL students, were
trained and certified last fall to be Project CARE educa
tors.
As educators, the group delivers accurate informa
tion on many alcohol and other drug-related topics,
including acute alcohol intoxication, drinking and dri
ving and reducing personal risk for alcohol-related prob
lems.
Bob Schroeder, UNL alcohol and drug program
coordinator, said the mission of Project CARE is to
affect the alcohol culture on campus through the promo
tion of responsible use or non-use of alcohol by all uni
versity students.
“College students often have misperceptions about
the use and abuse of alcoholSchroeder said. “This
group helps correct those.”
Schroeder said CARE educators challenge their lis
tening audiences - greek houses, residence hall floors,
academic classrooms and freshman foundation courses
- to demonstrate, care and concern for themselves and
others by practicing responsible alcohol consumption.
Stohs, however, said the group does more than give
presentations.
“We are a campuswide group, promoting and
encouraging healthy lifestyle choices,” he said.
Along with the eight CARE educators, Stohs said,
there are about 15 additional students in the group.
Tiffany Kline, a freshman biochemistry major,
joined the student-at-large group last fall. Kline is not a
Project CARE educator.
Kline, who is planning Alcohol Awareness Week in
October, said she stands behind the group’s mission 100
percent.
“There are better things to do beside drink or drink
irresponsibly” Kline said. “Project CARE helps promote
those things.”
Schroeder said Project CARE is planning to work
with NU Directions - a campus and community group
working with a $700,000 grant to fight high-risk drink
ing on the UNL campus - to promote alcohol education
within die community.
“With the grant there are many possibilities,”
Schroeder said. “We just want students to not only care
about themselves, but about each other.”
• Improving UNEs social environ
ment by increasing the availability of
attractive student-centered social
activities located on campus and in the
community.
• Improving neighborhood rela
tions by improving the social climate
Program offers students safe ride
By Sarah Fox
Staffwriter
Some UNL employees get paid to work on decreasing
student alcohol abuse, but three students are doing their
part to decrease it for no charge.
A student-led safe ride home program is one of the
university's newest efforts to reduce drinking and driving
The program, which is being coordinated by Brett
Stohs, Molly Schmitz and Laura Bradley, would let stu
dents get a free ride home on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday nights.
UNL students would call a student-staffed university
phone number from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. A taxi from Capital
Cab, 320 W. P St, would take students from a 4- to 5-mile
radius around campus to their homes. Non-UNL students
would pay $1 for the ride.
The taxi rides could not be used to travel between par
ties or bars, said Stohs, a sophomore mathematics major.
“It’s designed to bring students from anywhere,
home,” Stohs said. “It’s not designed to prolong the
evening.”
Stohs, Schmitz, and Bradley first met in 1998 at
LeaderShape, a spring break leadership conference.
“We came up with an idea to prevent more deaths like
Laura Cockson’s,” Stohs said.
Cockson was a UNL junior who was killed March 14,
1998, by drunken driver Jeffrey Ireland. She was a
Gamma Phi Beta Sorority member, as are Schmitz, a
junior elementary deaf education major, and Bradley, a
senior international business major.
After LeaderShape, the three joined Project CARE, a
UNL student group that gives presentations about alcohol
abuse. They researched other universities' programs, with
the help ofNational Group Rides and Designated Drivers,
a nonprofit organization
“We came up with the thought the best way to do it on
this campus was use the taxi service Lincoln has,” Stohs
said.
Stohs said UNL needed the program because it is a dry
campus.
Alcohol can only be served on campus at special
66
We know no matter how much
we try to educate students
about the dangers of high-risk
drinking, there will be some
who will participate in (it)”
James Griesen
vice chancellor for student affairs
events, and with the vice chancellor for student affairs’
permission, said Mary Ann Holland, staff assistant in
Greek Affairs.
Because of the recent crackdown of on-campus par
ties, many UNL students go off campus to drink and use
cars to drive home.
“Most of the concerns are off-campus parties,” Stohs
said ‘Teople don’t drive from fraternity to fraternity.”
James Griesen, vice chancellor for student affairs, said
he thought UNL needed a safe ride program.
“Obviously, I would prefer we didn’t have a need for it,
“Griesen said. “We know no matter how much we try to
educate students about die dangers of high-risk drinking,
there will be some who will participate in (it).”
Schmitz said the service, which will be named later,
should start by at least the end of nod semester.
The group is now researching how to pay for the pro
gram and working to get support from local businesses.
The safe rides home could be funded with student
fees, but some students who were surveyed by the group
said they don’t want their money used for the service.
“Telling students we’re going to raise fees always cre
ates an uproar,” Stohs said.
But the service will benef it all UNL students, she said.
“It’s not just for people who are drunk mid plastered,”
Stohs said. “Itls for the people who don’t want to ride home
with than.”
of UNL students who live off campus.
Steve McElravy, executive director
of the Nebraska Council to Prevent
Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said his role
as co-chairman of the education com
mittee was to teach students and the
community about alcohol’s adverse
effects.
“Our plan is to help get the word
out,” he said.
Through continued community
and campus support, Major said she
had no doubt NU Directions would
succeed in reducing high-risk campus
drinking patterns by 25 percent. (
“When you have to work with peo
ple in what is a long-term thing, it is
not easy,” Major said. “We have made
it this far. We will succeed.”
The nation’s war
Ten universities, including UNL,
received funding from the foundation
to combat binge drinking.
“This is not something the univer
sities can do themselves,” said Sandra
Hoover, deputy director for A Matter
of Degree national program. “An
essential feature of the program is the
formation of college-community part
nerships.”
Hoover said campus-community
coalitions nationwide are focusing on
simultaneously changing campus and
community environments as well as
norms that perpetuate students’ high
risk drinking.
Tracy Bachman, project assistant
for the Building Responsibility
Campus and Community Coalition at
the University of Delaware in Newark,
said the school received its $770,000
grant two years ago and has started
several programs with the money.
So far, Delaware has revised its
student judicial code so die university
notifies a student’s parents if he or she
has been charged with a drug or alco
hol offense, Bachman said. The uni
versity also has begun a five-star sys
tem of ranking greek houses’ compli
ance with grant initiatives. Top houses
get awards.
“It has fostered some healthy com
petition among students,” she said.
“Unfortunately, there is still more to
do.”
Robert Maust, project director for -
the A Matter of Degree Program at the
University of Colorado at Boulder,
agreed.
“We’ve been working on this for
two years,” Maust said. “By no means
are we finished yet.”
Maust said CU had been success
ful in finding late-night, alcohol-free
activities on campus for students, as
well as in sponsoring speakers and in
providing educational programming.
His university received $860,000 from
the foundation.
Maust and Bachman said their uni
versities’ officials had looked at distri
bution of liquor licenses around their
campuses and continued looking into
increasing enforcement of alcohol pol
icy procedures in their community.
“It’s hard when you have Coors
partially funding your university,”
Maust said.
Hoover said all campuses partici
pating in the program have received
positive and negative feedback about
their programs.
“The program should be looked at
as positive, not taking things away,”
she said. “We want students to know
that this is not somethmg against them.
It is for them.”
Last call
McElravy said he felt pleased to
work with NU Directions.
“I was excited when the campus
got the grant. I was excited to accept
the job,” McElravy said. “Our focus,
and mine, is to keep young people
alive and safe - to keep them going.”
Linder said student and communi
ty support had increased during the
past year, but more support was need
ed.
Julie Phye said she found similar
support for curbing high-risk drinking
as project coordinator for Stepping
Up, a program similar to NU
Directions that’s in place at the
University of Iowa in Iowa City.
“We have calling for change at uni
versities and colleges nationwide,”
Phye said. “The more students and
community members who answer and
are willing to help, the better we will
be.”