The University and the city of Eugene are ratcheting up their efforts to change the college drinking culture.
“If you are a minor and are caught with alcohol or have consumed alcohol and we can detect it, you will be cited,” Eugene Police Officer Edward Tsui said. Tsui is assigned to the campus division. “That’s a rock bottom line. We go to parties every single solitary weekend and we do enforcement every weekend, and you can guarantee that from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. we’re running from party to party to party.”
Last year the EPD issued 1,118 citations for “Minor In Possession” on campus or within approximately 10 blocks of campus, Sgt. Rick Gilliam said. An MIP carries a maximum fine of $250, he said, but is not considered a crime.
Also, after state and county assesments are added, the total can top more than $300.
The Office of Student Life has focused specifically on the “high-risk” drinker, who is identified in surveys as a male who has had at least five drinks or a female who has consumed at least four drinks in a row within the two weeks prior to the survey.
High-risk drinkers at the University number more than 3,000, said Jean Blanchard, program coordinator for New View 2000, an anti-alcohol/drug-abuse program run by Student Life.
Blanchard said her office applied for the two-year grant that funds New View 2000 because of the significant number of high-risk drinkers on campus and in recognition that high-risk drinkers create “secondary effects” that disrupt the lives of individuals around them.
Many students have reported to her office that high-risk drinkers decrease their sense of safety and “mess up” their living space, she said.
The effects of high-risk drinking include serious incidents, as well.
“The majority, if not all, the assaults on campus are alcohol-related,” Tsui said. “It is rare to have a sexual assault or a regular assault that doesn’t have one party or both parties intoxicated or drunk. Alcohol is basically the fuel for the fire.”
In an effort to combat the drinking problem last year, Student Life organized non-alcoholic alternatives, especially during the winter term, Blanchard said.
A New View 2000 brochure from last year lists films, musical performances, open-mic nights, a fashion show and dance parties in January and February.
But Blanchard said the grant has not been renewed, and those types of activities will be produced this year only to the extent that University approves funding for them.
In both 1997 and 1998, riots involving 100 to 250 people grew out of Halloween parties in the West University neighborhood and became out of control, Gilliam said.
In 1998, police arrested 12 people during the late-October incidents and charged them with riot-related crimes, he said.
In an effort to provide alternatives to drinking on Halloween, the Student Life offered students a Monte Carlo night, an all-night breakfast and a screening of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Blanchard said.
At that same time, the EPD canvassed the West University neighborhood prior to the Halloween weekend and talked with residents about public safety in an effort to step up the department’s visibility, Gilliam said.
Halloween 1999 was riot-free, he said.
The University also has set up incentives for Greek fraternities to be alcohol-free, said Shelley Sutherland, assistant director of student development.
“Last year, Vice President [of Administration] Dan Williams agreed to help chapters get Ethernet connections and to support fraternities trying to get live-in adults [house directors], if they voted for and demonstrated compliance with the substance-free issue,” she said.
A separate program, Select 2000, involving nine sororities and two fraternities to-date, aims to reduce substance abuse as part of its focus on scholarship and ethical leadership, Sutherland said.
At the start of this year, five fraternities — Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Delta Sigma Phi, Delta Upsilon and Theta Chi — will have agreed to be substance-free and have no alcohol in their building, she said.
Sororities have always agreed that their buildings would be substance-free, Sutherland said, and last year elected not to co-sponsor with fraternities any alcohol-related event at a fraternity house.
The EPD also puts on preventative talks to fraternities, sororities and residence halls, and has a segment during IntroDUCKtion in which officers speak about the zero-tolerance policy, Gilliam said. In addition, police talk about the rights of students living on and off campus.
Tsui said that the EPD has also been talking with Eugene municipal judges about adjusting ordinances to reduce fines for MIPs and replace them in part with educational sessions on alcohol abuse.
The Eugene Municipal Court next week starts such a program, said Court Supervisor Char Mauch.
For a first-time MIP, unlawfully allowing alcohol consumption on a private premises or furnishing liquor to a minor, 18-to20-year-olds who have not taken the UO course “Drinking Decisions” have the option of taking a one-unit course entitled BUSTED I (Beginning Underage Successes Through Educational Diversion) and paying court costs of $50 and a university fee of $35.
Fines and assessments would be suspended as long as the program is successfully completed, which requires that the individual pick up no new alcohol-related charges for four months and enter a guilty plea to the original alcohol charge.
The course covers health risks of alcohol abuse and goes into the various factors that contribute to problem drinking, said Miki Mace, administrator for the UO Substance Abuse Prevention Program.
“We’re really trying to get on an educational platform as much as we possibly can,” he said. “It doesn’t help to have an adversarial type of relationship with students.”