The University of Wisconsin System held its third symposium to address alcohol and other drug abuse issues on college campuses Monday and Tuesday at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.
The symposium focused on how to make first-year college students’ transitions into the college setting safer and easier.
Mary Stuart Hunter, director of the nationally renowned “Freshman Year” program at the University of South Carolina, spoke at the symposium, sharing her ideas with representatives from all 15 UW System campuses in attendance.
In addition, representatives from the Wisconsin Technical College System, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and the Wisconsin Chapter of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators were in attendance.
Susan Crowley, project director of UW-Madison’s PACE, which looks to reduce the consequences of high-risk drinking, said the transition for first-year students is one of the project’s main concerns.
“We are supporting students in a constructive, positive, helpful way,” Crowley said. “By recognizing that it is a period of experimentation, learning and a new setting where they set their own limits, we try to support them through this.”
Crowley said that instead of emphasizing the initial six weeks of a first-year student’s experience, the entire year should be focused on.
“The reality is the whole year is one of learning, exploration and reflection,” Crowley said.
Crowley also said the role of parents was a recurrent theme of the symposium, and one that PACE has adopted.
“That is the most tangible piece that PACE can use from the symposium,” Crowley said.
UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Donald Mash, the UW System AODA Committee chair, said most of what was suggested by speakers and experts who attended the symposium are methods the UW System already employs. The UW System aims to make more progress.
Mash said this is a particularly challenging problem in Wisconsin.
“The per capita consumption rate of alcohol in Wisconsin is probably the highest in the country,” Mash stated. “While it is a national issue, we have an exacerbation of that phenomena in Wisconsin that makes it particularly difficult.”
Mash said the goal is not to eliminate alcohol consumption altogether, but rather eliminate drug and alcohol abuse on UW campuses.
“It does not only affect the students who abuse the drug. Whether you live down the hall from someone who abuses alcohol, are out with a person on a date that abuses alcohol, or are a friend of someone who abuses alcohol, you get the spillover of that abuse,” he said. “It is like second-hand smoke.”
Mash continued by emphasizing that maximizing the educational potential of students is a reason the UW System is trying to control alcohol consumption and that safety is the main issue.
One way the UW System is tracking alcohol and drug consumption on campuses is through a survey developed and used for the first time last spring.
Mash said the survey will be administered again this spring and will be used to compare data among campuses and follow progress that is being made.
