By Michael Wafford
Senior Staff Writer
From April 15 to April 18 the Alcohol and Drug Education Committee held a series of alcohol screenings, awareness activities and gave students information about alcohol at California State University Bakersfield.
“This week what we’re doing is screening our students for their drinking behavior. How often are they drinking, how much are they drinking. What that does is give us some statistics on our student drinking on campus,” said Erika Delamar, head of the Alcohol and Drug Education Committee.
The screenings involved a questionnaire. Based on the answers are given a score ranging from zero to 40. if the score is toward the upper end, 19 or more, it is recommended that the test-taker see a health care provider for an evaluation or seek counseling at CSUB or at an off-campus center.
CSUBs drinking patterns do not point toward one particular pattern of behavior for the campus as a whole.
“It’s kind of a mix. You have those students who don’t drink, and then we have those students who do drink but we would say that their drinking isn’t displaying any concern. And, then we do have students who do have some issues of concern when their patterns come back,” said Delamar.
“Most of the time that tends to be that they’re drinking too many drinks in a single setting or they’re experiencing negative consequences of their drinking. Example of that would be; that they’re getting injured when they’re drinking, or they’re failing to do things when they’re drinking like they’re hungover and don’t make to to class the next day,” said Delamar.
“In 2001 the CSU chancellor mandated that each university had to have an alcohol and drug education committee. With that there were certain things they mandated were need to need to be done,” said Delamar. The changes that were mandated included updating the schools drug and alcohol policies and creating outreach events.
“We get a good turnout [at outreach events]. We try to do a variety of events. So we do educational events to the more fun kind of outreach. At out fall event we had over 500 students participate and about 325 in our winter event,” said Delamar.
Delamar said that they do assess their events for student learning. If the event does not educate students effectively they’ll change the event to better teach them “in a fun way” according to Delamar.
For CSUB’s current campus alcohol policy, according to Delamar, drinking is permitted on campus in designated areas like The Roost and during events where the serving of alcohol has been allowed as long as the drinker is 21. Alcohol is allowed in the dorms as long as everyone in the area is 21 years-old or older, even if those under 21 are not drinking.
According to CSUB’s campus crimes disclosure for the 2012 academic year there were five alcohol related violations and one drug violation during 2011 on the main campus. The Antelope Valley location reporter no alcohol or drug based crimes during that same time period.
Delamar describes CSUB as “not having a lot of violations.” In the past three years there have been 14 alcohol-related on campus at CSUB and in the residence halls. In comparison, CSU Humboldt reported 56 arrests in the same time span. CSU Dominguez Hills has had zero violations in the last three years.
