The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, April 22, 1999, Page 6, Image 6
answers . ' k MINISTRIES from page 1 you’re just giving them a Band-Aid.” What’s underneath for most stu dents, Hatfield said, is a spiritual void, often coupled with a desire for accep tance. It’s a void, he said, that only God can fill. Scott Pixler, leader of Christian Student Fellowship campus ministry, agreed. When people buy new cars, he said, and the owner’s manual says to use unleaded gas, chances are the car won’t run as well if a different type of gas is used. The same principle applies to our lives, he said. “We can try to put other things in there - fill our lives with money, drink, sex, drugs - but it will never satisfy the way God can.” Drugs and alcohol Pixler said a heavy-handed approach is especially ineffective with students and alcohol. The most effective way to treat drug and alcohol abuse is to treat the cause instead of the symptom, said Pixler, who has led Christian Student Fellowship for 11 years. Students, he said, drink for three main reasons: acceptance from peers, to have fun and to rebel or experiment, especially if they were forbidden from drinking by their parents and are alone for the first time in their lives. out the real weakness or drinking, he said, is that the satisfaction of alcohol is only temporary. “The fun you had last night isn’t nearly as much fun when you have a hangover the next morning,” he said. And he said that those who get drunk for acceptance find that any friendships that are based on alcohol often are fleeting. But it is not enough to simply dis courage drinking, Pixler said, because whenever something is prohibited it tends to immediately become popular. What Christian Student Fellowship does instead, he said, is offer students the alternative of a relationship with God, a relationship in which the high of one day is still there the next morning. Navigators member Paul Pankonin, a sophomore business administration major, said he is a firsthand witness to the emptiness of alcohol23 abuse. He said he drank to excess often during his freshman year and early in his sophomore year before making a deci sion at a Navigators event in October to abstain. His decision was not affected by outside pressure,*he said, but was simply a personal decision to put his trust in God. “If I didn’t have that loyalty toward Christ,” he said, “I would drink as much as anyone else.” He said he was nervous about how some of his Farmhouse Fraternity brothers would react to his decision, fearing that some may think his absti nence was a form of judgment on those who did drink. But it is a decision he does not regret. “I feel better and don’t feel guilty about the night before,” he said. “At par ties, I still act crazy and have a good time, and people don’t mind that I’m not drinking.” Although Pankonin’s friends were supportive of his decision, he acknowl edged that some people might have a tougher time. “It’s a struggle fitting in some times for some guys,” he said. “People get frustrated that so much revolves around alcohol.” Hatheld, who was a yell-squad and Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity mem ber at Kansas State University in Manhattan in the mid-1970s, said he can relate to such struggles because he fought the same battles. But what is worse in the campus cli mate today, he said, is that alcohol abuse is now more likely to lead to other prob lems, such as physical and sexual abuse. Sex Pastor Bill Steinbauer of the UNL Lutheran Center, said he, too, can relate to what students are going through, especially young men. “I have a doctorate degree on being a boy,” he said. The majority of his counseling is on sexual issues, he said, and his biggest advice to students is that when it comes to sex, students must believe they are worth the wait. Students become sexually active, he said, because they believe that they don’t have a sense of self-worth. But that lifestyle will eventually leave them empty, Steinbauer said. “They don’t see themselves as worth waiting for. Then afterward they realize thatthey didn’t get much.” Many students come to such a real ization during their junior or senior years, he said, although some never do. “I’ve spoken with people who have gone wacky with their ideas on sexuali ty,” he said. “They have really lost con trol of themselves and are going to have problems later on in their lives.” Last year, Steinbauer gave an eight part lecture series on the Biblical book “Song of Solomon,” a book that deals with issues of sexuality, to help students think about sex and relationships. Other UNL ministries have also dealt exclusively with sexual issues recently. The Rev. Melissa Finlaw Draper of the campus ministry Cornerstone directed a program called “Sexuality and Spirituality” last fall. She said the program consisted of small discussion groups that dealt with a broad range of sexual issues. Historically, she said, the church has taught Christians to separate their spirits from their bodies, when in fact they are both part of God’s creation and are intertwined. Navigators and Campus Crusade for Christ have a yearly program called “Man Maker” that tries to explore what it means to be a man, including issues of sexuality and how to treat women. Steinbauer said that challenging young men to be godly is one of the most important parts of his ministry. During his all-male Bible studies, he said, he asks his students to hold them selves accountable when dealing with sexual situations and teaches them to develop their nurturing sides. One change in female students he has noticed over the years is that more have joined men as active sexual pur suers, which leads to more sexual rela tions and consequently, he said, to more students selling themselves short “Nine times out of 10, sex makes relationships more difficult,” he said. “I encourage them to not make it harder than it already is.” Saving souls There are 26 campus ministries list ed in the UNL student directory, and Hatfield said more students than ever David Spade Sophie Marceau A comedy about a. guy who would do anything to get the girl of His dreams - and did! NEAR YOU bund One of these dogsVmust be Spade. ALCON ENTERTAINMENT presbts DAVID SPADE SOPHIE MARCEAU 'LOST AW PATRICK BRUEL ARTIE LAKE MITCHELL WHITFIELD nd MARTIN SHEEN “JOHN DEBNEY touSTOOOP. SMITH """“SWAYNE RICE MORRIE EISENMAN ANDREW A KOSOVE BRODERICK JOHNSON "VS. COOK t MARC MEEKS (DAVID SPADE "“UJEFF POLLACK www.wMostandfound.com are joining. Navigators, which has been on cam pus for 47 years, divides its services up into large fellowships, such as the Friday night worship, small-group stud ies and one-on-one studies. Hatfield directs a staff of nine full-time employ ees who administer the studies, often held in dormitories and greek houses. Hatfield said he thinks many stu dents are ignorant of how involved Christian ministries are on campus and how many people are involved. Tom Yeakley, director of U.S. Campus Ministry for Navigators, visit ed the UNL chapter April 14-17. He said the spiritual temperature is rising on campuses across America and that more students are joining ministries. But he said there is still a long way to go to reach what he calls “revival”: a rededication of student Christians that would spill over to other students and attract them to the church. Today’s students are coming to cam pus with greater needs than ever, Yeakley said, whether it be from experi encing alcohol abuse, sexual abuse or from coming from a broken home. And campus ministries have the solutions to those needs, he said. “We present Jesus as the answer, and people are willing to come and investigate that.” Steinbauer said he finds it immensely satisfying when troubled students accept this answer and are able to clean up their lives. “People who have messedoap see themselves as damaged, as not repairable,” he said. “But anyone can be put back together.” Program sheds light on drinking problems By Eric Rineer Staff writer While he has spent much of his life being a man of God, Otto Schultz knows, too, what it is like to live life on the wild side. Schultz, a reverend at several Midwestern churches during the 1970s and member of All Saints Lutheran church in Lincoln, 8251 Pioneers Blvd., often found refuge in alcohol during his priesthood. A recovering alcoholic for 25 years, Schultz’s drinking days may be over, but his memories are not. The priest is now working with several colleges and universities across the state to teach youngsters the dangers of substance abuse. “A lot of local bars and neighbor hood bars are like religious institu tions,” said Schultz, who recently started an alcohol awareness program. “You go (to the bar) - you get com fort and pain. You get celebration in times of joy.... There’s a certain com petition between the religious com munity and the bar community.” Schultz’s program, Flashing Your Brights, is still in it early phases, he said, but much progress has been made to this point. I his spring, Schultz said he and his staff had conducted surveys to find out how many students agreed that, by personal intervention, they could help resolve a friend’s drinking problem. After interviewing 629 students, Schultz said 93 percent of those stu dents said peer intervention could help binge drinkers with their drinking problems. The term, flashing your brights, was an analogy for personal interven tion, he said. Schultz gave an example of how to flash brights at a person abusing alco hol. If people forget their car lights are out because they are driving under the influence, he said, flashing headlights at those people could save them from being arrested, he said. Flashing brights could also be let ting someone know how they acted after a particular alcohol-related situa tion, he said. Schultz gave an example. ‘“Hey man, last night you barfed on my shoes, and this doesn’t go with me.’ “It’s a matter of holding somebody accountable for their behavior,” he said. Flashing Your Brights will consist of five strategies for peer intervention, he said. These strategies include: ■ expressing personal concerns about a friend’s behavior; ■ holding drinkers accountable for their behavior, ■ offering people hope for a change in their lifestyle; ■ offering informal education; ■ 'being factual with drinkers about their behavior. While Schultz said he did not believe drinking to be a major problem on the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus, he said he believed that students generally consume more alcohol than others between ages 18 and 24. “A lot of students hurt themselves - a lot of dropout is related to exces sive alcohol abuse,” he said. Schultz said he did not see con sumption of alcohol as a moral issue, but said alcohol sometimes served as a false god to people dependent upon the substance, he said. “Alcohol as a god sucks,” said Schultz, who said he was also con cerned that binge drinking hurt stu dents socially. Many times, males who engage in sexual activity upon finishing a few beers are the same males who do not know the first thing about picking up girls while sober, he said. “Our theory is that one of the things we can change is the social norms.” Alcohol often interferes with a person’s social skills, Schultz said. He said young people who abused alcohol often grew up socially awkward. “Anytime you are under the influ ence or aiconoi or a drug, you aon i experience behavior in a realistic way,” he said. By next semester, Schultz said, he and his staff will seek to train student assistants on different methods for uti lizing peer intervention in alcohol related situations. The idea is for student assistants, in turn, to teach those methods to other students. Schultz said he and his staff would also develop activities and place ads and articles in newspapers to promote the program. Larry Meyer, a campus pastor at UNL’s Lutheran Center and member of Flashing Your Brights, said he hoped the program would make others aware of the dangers involved in alco hol abuse. “Binge drinking, in my mind, is irresponsible behavior,” Meyer said. “Other than putting your life at risk ... alcohol poisoning is part of (the danger),” he said. “(Both) can throw you into a coma.” While alcohol poisoning and drunken driving were extreme exam ples, Meyer said there were plenty of other reasons binge drinking put peo ple at risk. Some examples he gave were stu dents engaging in unsafe sexual activ ity or students breaking laws that they normally would not 4 In many cases, Meyer said, binge drinkers often get the wrong impres sion: that friends are comfortable with their behavior. “I think if the program can give some people some warnings that (binge drinking) is dangerous behav ior ... then it has done what it is sup posed to do.”