Vanderbilt staff and student leaders have come together to form a new committee, the Alcohol Working Group, which will work to find ways to lower the number of extreme drinking episodes.
The formation of the committee comes on the heels of a year with many alcohol-related incidents. Incidents during the 2008-09 academic years were up about 30 percent over the year before, said Clayton Arrington, senior director of the Office of the Dean of Students.
Through focus groups and conversations over the summer, the decision was made to form a committee to focus on the subject. Eight students and eight staff members sit on the committee, in what Arrington called “an equal partnership.”
“It has to be an ongoing effort,” said Senior Director of Residential Education Randy Tarkington. “We can’t just do something at the beginning of the year and just stop. We’ve had over 20 students this year transported to the emergency department because of severe intoxication.”
The goal of the group is not to stop student drinking, but rather to curb the number of extreme episodes that result in emergency room visits, Arrington said.
“I don’t think we’re in a position to measure our successes and failures based on the number of hospital visits, because we don’t want to discourage people from going to the hospital when they need to,” said Arrington. “But if we can get a student to stop going from shot four to shot seven, and that keeps them from going to the hospital, then that’s great.”
As the group does not have the power to set campus policy, its members may suggest policy changes to Dean of Students Mark Bandas, but the focus will surround incorporating better alcohol education into the areas of campus where it is needed.
For example, Tarkington said, if a number of alcohol-related incidents are found to be taking place in certain residence halls, programming in those halls may be altered to better incorporate alcohol education.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Public Relations Director Lucie Rhoads, who serves as one of VSG’s representatives in the committee. “This group was formed because there’s a need for it.”
“The call none of us want to make is the call to parents to say, ‘Your student is no longer with us,’” said Tarkington. “Campuses around the country have to make that call every year. We’ve been very fortunate, but we’ve been awfully close.”
