College Fair questions

bclintonk
Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:59:47 +0000

The “substance free?” inquiry obviously won’t accomplish that, since no college rep is going to say “Well here’s a list of our dormitories where substance abuse is permitted.”



Not our experience. Many colleges specifically identify certain of their housing facilities as substance-free. They of course are quick to add that all federal, state, and local laws must be complied with everywhere on campus, but in many cases this means that a student who is 21 could legally have alcohol in a college housing facility unless it’s specifically prohibited by the college. Beyond prohibiting alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, including misuse of prescription drugs, in the facility itself, the substance-free living option usually requires students to pledge to refrain from using these substances anywhere while residing in the substance-free environment. The idea is to create a support group for those wishing to avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. At some schools, the pledge also includes not coming back to the substance-free dorm while under the influence of alcohol. This is actually a very big deal; loud, drunken roommates, suitemates, or hallway neighbors can be a real annoyance, as can some of the other side effects of excessive alcohol consumption which we don’t need to address here in graphic detail. A student who returns drunk, say from an off-campus party, to a non-substance-free dorm might very well not be breaking any college rules, though if that student is underage he may have broken a state law somewhere off-campus. A student who returns drunk to a substance-free dorm is probably violating his or her substance-free pledge, which could be grounds for termination of that living arrangement.

In any event, our experience is that colleges that have substance-free housing options are eager to boast about them. How effectively the substance-free pledge is enforced may be another matter, however. My D1 reports that many of the students in substance-free housing at her college are there only because their parents insisted, and for at least some of them, it doesn’t appear to curb alcohol consumption. Some other colleges report better results.