Alcohol Education required for new students

8/20/2009

The University Daily Kansan

By Jesse Rangel

New students under the age of 22 will soon be on the clock to take an online alcohol education course.

Marlesa Roney, vice provost for student success, said the University would e-mail a link to an online test to incoming freshmen and transfer students under the age of 22 Aug. 31. The online test is part of a course AlcoholEdu. The University sent e-mails on Monday to those students who have to take the test.

Affected students will have a deadline of Sept. 24 to take the first assessment, Roney said. Students can complete the second part of the assessment 30 days after the first part, but must have the second part finished by Nov. 2. Roney said those who did not finish the tests would have a holds placed on their enrollment for Spring classes.

AlcoholEdu is a web-based product by Outside the Classroom, Inc. of Needham, Mass. Brandon Busteed, CEO of Outside the Classroom, said the company wanted to provide basic knowledge about alcohol to students before they came to college so that other on-campus alcohol education programs wouldn’t have to repeat facts. He said the program was important at the college level because, at the start of college, both the number of drinking occasions per month and drinks per occasion increased.

“As an aggregate, more than 50 percent of college students, before they arrive in college, are non-drinkers,” Busteed said.

Mai Hester, marketing coordinator for the Wellness Resource Center, said the program would complement the center’s education efforts. But she said it was still important for educators to reach out to upperclassmen.

“We really want to include the entire KU community on the alcohol initiatives the University has taken,” Hester said. “Our health educators target more than new students.”

As for the students who have to take the test, Busteed said the program was not just for high-risk drinkers, but also for students who didn’t drink, and moderate drinkers, whom he said made up 60 percent of students.

“Some of the riskiest behaviors come from those who consider themselves moderate drinkers,” Busteed said. “The idea is that there is risk across any level of alcohol consumption.”

Bridgette Heine, St. Louis, Mo. senior and peer health educator in the Wellness Resource Center said the University was being proactive in starting an online education course.

“I think it’s good that they’re doing it when students start,” Heine said. “We do have programs, but they’re not mandatory. People don’t have to come to them. So with this there’s just some information that students have to see.”

Matt Tomlinson, Olathe freshman, questioned the usefulness of the program, given all of the other opportunities to learn about alcohol use.

“I think it’s pointless,” Tomlinson said. “I feel like we all know about it, and with orientation and stuff, we’ve all heard the same stuff.”

Sean McDaniel, Baltimore senior, said the test might help younger students, but he, as a 21-year-old transfer student, should not have to take the course.

“I have gone through that stuff many times before, being at other universities, being a transfer student,” McDaniel said. “I graduated high school in Germany, so it was easy to drink over there. I was 18 and they made it work over there.”

The information will be combined to look at drinking trends and to see what students do and don’t know, Roney said. However, Roney said student information would remain anonymous.

“There’s no way to connect what you do on AlcoholEdu with your name,” Roney said. “My hope is that it will create an environment of trust. We’re really wanting students to understand this is a great benefit.”

Busteed said that the program relies on honest answers to get an aggregate point of view on students’ drinking habits.

“The program is both confidential and anonymous,” Busteed said. “The more honest they are to the program, the more beneficial a program will be to them.”

Busteed also said that the program stressed overall alcohol education, not just the black-and-white law of drinking at age 21.

Megan Palame, communications specialist for Outside the Classroom, said the program could help schools see whether drinking behavior increased a lot or a little from the first assessment to the second.

“The results from the confidential surveys allow your school to understand the effectiveness of its prevention efforts following the completion of AlcoholEdu,” Palame said.

Roney said the first part would take 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete, and that the second part would take about 15 minutes. She said the course had interactive components and videos.

Roney said the course was informative and provided an understanding of the “real mechanics of what’s going on.” She said the course taught her some things about alcohol, and that she and a few of her colleagues failed their first pre-tests when they took them earlier this year.

“I had some things to learn,” Roney said. “I did pass the final test with flying colors.”