Trinity University’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Policy provides information to students about making safe and educated decisions when drinking. Students of varying backgrounds reflected on their experience and opinion of this policy.
Many students actively use substances on and off campus. The alcohol policy addresses this activity, both prohibiting underage drinking, and providing for the confiscation of illegal substances. Additionally, it promotes the no-consequence responsible friend initiative.
Dawson Wolff, junior finance and political science double-major, recalled an instance when he used the responsible friend initiative. Wolff, then a sophomore, said the university helped him and the intoxicated person without judgment or repercussions.
“They were very honest. They just wanted to make sure that my friend was OK, and I never felt like we were being necessarily punished for it. I think they were just worried about safety at that point,” Wolff said. “I don’t think, on any account, we felt like we were in trouble for anything like that. It was just strictly a safety issue, but it was a good experience.”
The responsible friend initiative allows students to call TUPD for someone who is intoxicated without punishment. The policy includes both alcohol and drugs and aims to encourage students to take the initiative to help each other on campus.
“I was very stressed. I was very overwhelmed, but I will applaud them by the way they handled it,” Wolff said. “I felt immediately calmer by the way I was being addressed by staff, by TUPD, even the ambulance workers, so that was a good experience.”
Audrey Vanegas, sophomore accounting major, shared her perspective as a student living in a substance-free living community on campus — the Swashbucklers. She said that the university’s stance on alcohol allows both students who partake in drinking and those who don’t to feel comfortable.
“[College is] very big on drinking culture — and I think that having that substance-free area is really important,” Vanegas said. “I have nothing against the people who drink and do drugs, but I think that it’s also very important that Trinity has a space that’s completely free.”
As a Swash-captain, Vanegas said she meets people of varying backgrounds with different reasons for choosing the living-community — from people who have no interest in substances to people who have struggled with addiction in the past.
The responsible friend initiative is designed to be an accessible way for students to get help if they find themselves in an unsafe substance situation. Beckton Watson, first-year philosophy major, used the initiative and echoed Wolff’s appreciation of the system.
“I had to call it in on someone I had just met, and it was very seamless, I guess,” Watson said. “We called them, and they showed up in like five minutes, took his vitals and then everything was fine. Very easy.”
The one critique Wolff, Watson and Vanegas all expressed is the lack of education and transparency around the responsible friend initiative. Vanegas said she did not learn about the policy until the summer between her first and second year.
“I only found out about that policy because I did O-team, that’s where I found out about the policies. … I think it’s important, especially because you won’t get in trouble for trying to help someone,” Vanegas said. “I think it needs to be advertised a lot more because the only reason I knew about it was because I was doing training on that stuff, and I’m pretty sure they did say that at orientation but orientation drops so much stuff on you, you don’t end up remembering.”
Wolff, too, said he was surprised by how seamless the process of using the responsible friend initiative was, considering he had nothing to base his expectations on.
“I think the process can be intimidating,” Wolff said. “I think maybe having more graphics like possibly posters in halls about exactly what the process looks like just simply it’s easy to call the number and saying safe buddy, and then explain the situation, but some people can be intimidated by that, so I think just being a little more transparent in how it works would be nice.”
After using the policy, Watson also called for greater efforts to educate students on the ease and availability of the responsible friend initiative.
“I think maybe the only thing [to be changed] would be if they were a little more transparent about how easy it was. I think it’s still a little daunting for people, but it’s super easy — no one got in trouble,” Watson said. “I think it works well. I think the only thing that would stop it from working well is if some didn’t call.”
This article is the second part of a two-part series addressing alcohol compliance on campus.