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Prevention
Jim McBryde, Special Assistant for Drug Policy in the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), will serve as liaison for MDCH and the universities to be available for speaking at freshman orientation and to groups on campus throughout the academic year.
University presidents should get tough on problem binge drinkers on their campuses and should offer treatment. If treatment is not accepted, students should be discharged from school. When problem drinking is identified, parents and scholarship providers should be notified.
Campus Mentoring Program: $433,000 in Office of Drug Control Policy grant money will be made available on an in-kind match basis for campuses to provide peer mentors for students. Contact would be made with students upon acceptance at participating colleges and universities, campus alcohol policies and information would be sent to students and to parents with some sort of "check-off" component, and the five-week mentoring program would be offered to all prospective freshmen students. This program must include training for the mentors and may include some sort of compensation for the mentors, such as credits towards text books.
Presidents are strongly urged to provide more low-cost, alcohol-free activities for students on campus to better compete with bars.
Presidents should bring pressure on campus newspapers and subsidized campus radio stations to stop all drink-special and keg-special ads. Bar owners will be encouraged to better police themselves in the way they promote alcohol advertising.
Residential aides and others in sororities and fraternities will be trained in "tough love" in dealing with problem drinkers. MDCH will sponsor the trainings on campuses in cooperation with university presidents' offices.
MDCH will spend $50,000 on a "best practices in treatment" training grant program for college counselors. The department will sponsor a state training for college counselors.
MDCH will promote current university activities, such as MSU's "Safe Ride Home".
MDCH will work closely with the Liquor Control Commission, the Michigan State Police, and local law enforcement to:
Notify parents when underage students are caught drinking. Campus public safety departments need to enforce this. (P.A. 122 of 1995 currently requires parental notification of minors in possession.)
Establish a more aggressive program in bars to monitor the consumption of alcohol by their patrons.
MDCH will publish a new web site outlining campus policies and what is going on to fight underage and binge drinking on each of the campuses. This site will be an effective tool for students along with parents as they consider where to go to college. This will in involve public and private colleges and universities in Michigan.
MDCH will spend $150,000 placing targeted ads in college newspapers and on college radio stations as part of a combined media campaign.