By Jonathan Hiser Senior News Reporter
College students consume alcohol, plain and simple. The American Psychiatry Association reports that four in five college students consume at least some alcohol beverage. Hitting the bottle in the dorm rooms can be a risky practice for many UP residents; Public Safety reported 96 disciplinary referrals and eight arrests for campus liquor law violations for 2006.
However, according to an on-campus housing survey, 80 percent of freshmen, sophomore and junior respondents ranked substance-free floors as a potentially attractive living option. Administered last February, the online survey received 589 replies for a total response rate of 53 percent.
With this statistic in mind, the policies sub-committee within the 2006-07 Task Force on Residence Life Committee included a recommendation to offer substance-free floors as an on-campus housing option for future students.
All 58 recommendations made by the Task Force were given to the officers of the University, including the Board of Regents and Residence Life.
Although not guaranteed to take effect, this particular recommendation may be considered during the planning of new campus residence halls, said Carmen Kwong, director of alumni relations and chair of the Task Force's policies sub-committee.
"It's not so much an age thing, but instead an option for those who made the choice that they did not want any substances, like alcohol or smoking, a part of their lives," said Brenda Greiner, director of the Freshman Resource Center and co-chair of the 2006-2007 Task Force.
The online survey cited in the recommendation was intended to get a sense of student motivation for living either on campus or off campus. Because the majority of seniors do not return to UP, they were left out of the survey, said Institutional Research Director Karen Nelson.
"We wanted to catch students in their thought process in that February time frame when they are thinking about where they are going to live next year," Nelson said. "Seniors are no longer in that thought process, so we tend to not include them in those surveys."
Society of Sobriety President, John Guptill said the option would give those who select it an atmosphere free of pressures or distractions associated with alcohol by being around other students with similar standards.
Transfer student Evan Williams, 22, said that although he wouldn't opt to live on such a floor, he nonetheless agreed with the idea.
"I think a lot of people would drink specifically because of peer pressure. So if you had a community where it was agreed upon that it wasn't acceptable to drink, then students could fall back on that and say 'no,' rather than worrying about looking uncool," Williams said.
Williams lives in Christie Hall with sophomore Jordan Phippen and said he does have a small supply of wine in his collection. Although Williams and Phippen never discussed the topic of having alcohol in the room, Phippen said he isn't disturbed by its presence.
Kwong said that she and other committee members did receive comments from students who were interested in quieter floors, saying that alcohol is sometimes related to rowdiness or in general, more noise.
"There are people who actually just don't drink or don't need any of that around them, for whatever reason," Kwong said.
