Alcohol awareness program hopes for a face-lift

In the near future, GCSU hopes to add a growing alcohol awareness program to not only improve the schools current “awareness” of alcohol, but also to keep students mindful and responsible.

The expansion calls for the adoption of a program called the Collegiate Recovery Center.

Chris Lamphere, head of GCSU’s Alcohol Awareness Program, is eager for the startup.

“Hopefully this program, if adopted, will raise the currently low student participation in alcohol awareness at GCSU. This program will allow us to choose from a large amount of different events that are tested and known to work in college communities, like themed non-alcoholic parties for example,” Lamphere said.

As does Lamphere, many students wouldn’t mind having a better alcohol awareness program on campus.

“I would love for a program like this to open up here at GCSU,” said GCSU sophomore Andrea Mahoney.

“Although GCSU is looking to adopt this program, we are uncertain how much money a program like this would cost, as it’s different for every school,” said Lamphere.

Currently, GCSU has an alcohol awareness program called AlcoholEdu which provides students with workshops that are not only targeted towards alcohol but towards smoking, drugs and safe sex as well.

According to GCSU’s event attendance records, the involvement of these alcohol events is not the most important thing on students’ agendas. Less than one hundred students attend alcohol awareness events on campus. There are little over 6,000 students at GCSU, which means that only six percent of the students are active.

“To be honest,” Lamphere said, “it’s hard to convince students to come to the events. They would much rather go to the bars and drink.”

According to CRC’s Web site, its mission statement states that the program is a model that helps schools set a basic foundation and understanding of alcohol awareness.

Kennesaw State University is just one of the 14 schools that have adopted this new program.

“The Collegiate Recovery Center offers students support groups, twelve-step programs and on-campus activities which will enable students to live honest and productive lives in and out of school,” said Lindsay Johnson, director of the Alcohol Awareness Program at Kennesaw State University.

This new program will not only provide greater initiative to come to awareness events but also grant another factor to hopefully lower the amount of DUIs and MIPs in the Milledgeville area.

GCSU’s alcohol awareness program is first introduced to students during freshman seminar class. During this class, students are required to take a test that asks questions regarding alcohol and drugs. After the test, the answers will categorize each student into different programs the campus provides. The classes are not mandatory, but are suggested.

According to surveys taken after the AlcoholEdu class, 71 percent of freshman said their understanding of Blood Alcohol Concentration would change the way they drink, and 82 percent said they would recommend AlcoholEdu to others.

This new program will not cancel out the current AlcoholEdu class but will work with it to provide more than just the “mandatory” reason to learn about alcohol awareness.

“We hope the information learned during AlcoholEdu will help students make smart personal decisions, while also suggesting the same decisions to their friends who may be drinking as well,” Lamphere said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on May 1 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry