Student Services

AOD Update

Reed College remains engaged in ongoing efforts to improve and enhance the strength of the college and the wellbeing of its students by effectively preventing and responding to problems related to alcohol and other drugs (AOD). In the fall of 2010, Reed’s president, Colin Diver, charged the college’s standing Drug and Alcohol Committee (DAC) with the following tasks:
  • recruiting experts to comprise an external review team (ERT)
  • framing questions for the ERT to consider in its evaluation of Reed’s approach to AOD
  • providing the ERT with relevant background information
  • hosting the ERT’s campus visit

Having received a detailed self-study prepared by the vice president and dean of student services and his staff, the ERT visited campus in the spring of 2011. The ERT consisted of nationally recognized experts in a variety of AOD-related fields, including education and prevention, therapeutic intervention and policy development. The ERT’s Final Report (Kerberos login required) reflects the committee’s summary of its findings as prepared for President Diver, who determined the report should be made available in its entirety to the entire Reed community.

In the cover letter submitted with its report, the ERT stated the following:

We would like to make clear (as we did while on the Reed Campus) that it is certainly up to your institution to do with this report as you wish – these are not prescriptions, and, ultimately, you know yourselves and your campus best. We do hope you find the report useful as you consider how to best work with and for the students at Reed College.

We, the members of Reed’s Drug and Alcohol Committee, welcome the ERT’s perspective and suggestions. We offer the following AOD Updates as an adjunct to the ERT’s Final Report in order to clarify Reed’s current procedures regarding AOD and describe the ways in which we have begun to implement some of the ERT’s recommendations. We invite comment from the community via comments on the ERT’s Final Report (Kerberos login required). 

Laura Leibman, professor of English and humanities, committee chair
Timothy Hackenberg, professor of psychology
Alexi Ditter, professor of Chinese
Pat McDougal, professor of chemistry and dean of the faculty
Kate Smith, director of health and counseling
Kristin Holmberg, director of student activities
Mike Brody, vice president and dean of student services
Rachel Lyn Cole-Jansen ’12
Torra Spillane ’12
Michael Tamada, director of institutional research 

AOD Updates

Education/Prevention/Health Promotion
Reed’s primary focus in terms of AOD is preventive. Through education and health promotion, we strive to minimize student misuse and abuse of AOD and the deleterious effects that can result therefrom. Reed’s annual first-year student orientation includes an obligatory session on AOD education. We have sought to strike a balance between admonition and edification, avoiding paternalistic preaching in favor of an appeal to students’ curiosity and their thirst for information. The presentation varies year-to-year, but always includes an educational element based on the latest science regarding the effects of AOD on learning, memory formation, and social interactions. This year we enhanced the content focused on the nexus of AOD misuse and sexual assault. In addition, we inform students about the college’s three-pronged approach to AOD, which includes education/prevention/health promotion, therapeutic support, and enforcement.

Members of the clinical staff in Reed’s Health & Counseling Center (HCC) have training in AOD assessment and treatment, and several staff members have sub-specialty expertise in AOD. One such clinician has focused a great deal on outreach, facilitating discussions in the residence halls with resident directors (RDs), house advisers (HAs), and students. In addition, as we did last year, three staff members have visited each residential life area group early in the fall semester to discuss AOD at Reed: Gary Granger (community safety director), Bruce Smith (associate dean of student and campus Life) and Mike Brody (vice president/dean of student services).

In an effort to fully engage student leadership, the vice president/dean of student services (VP/DoS) employed an Honor Council representative over the summer to enhance the Honor Council’s role in linking the Honor Principle to individual accountability, especially as it pertains to AOD. Other student initiatives include the Peer Health Advocate (PHA) program and the Night Owls.

Broadly speaking, the role of the PHA is to share information regarding health and wellness with student colleagues. Areas of focus include stress management, nutrition, exercise/physical activity, body image, mental health, and sexual health. In the coming year, AOD will be a primary focus, with ongoing collaboration between PHAs, HCC staff, and Kris Anderson, Reed psychology professor and nationally recognized expert in college AOD issues.

In an effort to make good use of peer support, we recently created the Night Owl program. A paramedic—and Reed alumus—trained the Night Owls, paying particular attention to helping them recognize signs of potentially dangerous intoxication. Community safety staff trained the Night Owls in the use of proper procedures when calling for help. Having completed this training, Night Owls have begun to patrol the campus during large social events when substances are likely to be in use, offering assistance when they become aware of potential problems. This program has been very well received by students thus far.

Finally, we continue to see our work with health and wellness, the Gray Fund, and other activities focused on adaptive, substance-free stress management (and fun!) pay meaningful AOD prevention dividends.

Therapeutic support
Based on our understanding that many AOD problems derive from unhealthy choices and behaviors, Reed devotes significant resources to therapeutic support, the second key component of Reed’s approach to AOD. In the past year, Kate Smith, our HCC director and a clinician with considerable experience in AOD treatment, has joined leaders in health care, law enforcement, government, and education at local and national conferences focused on developing best practices in AOD prevention and response. Kate provides continuing education for the HCC clinical staff on an regular basis.

The HCC did a great deal of work over the summer to substantially improve and enhance AOD and wellness-related web-based resources (available for your review at http://www.reed.edu/health_center/drug_resources/index.html). In addition, the HCC has collaborated with Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) in bringing speakers to campus to address harm reduction as well as the effects of alcohol use on memory. The HCC’s various collaborations have resulted in greater availability of information about community-based resources for AOD treatment services that are not available directly through the HCC. This year the HCC is partnering with SSDP to bring training in the recognition of alcohol poisoning (similar to the Night Owl training) to the student body at large.

In the coming year, HCC staff will devote additional resources to responding to students whose AOD violations result in mandated assessments, either through disciplinary follow-up and/or medical amnesty.

Medical amnesty represents a new and important element of Reed College’s strategy for keeping Reed students safe. In an effort to encourage students to seek help for themselves and for friends in acute need of medical or other therapeutic attention due to AOD abuse, many institutions of higher education have adopted medical amnesty policies, excusing such students from some disciplinary consequences of AOD use. The VP/DoS and HCC director have worked for over a year with various students who have demonstrated an informed interest in this matter, including SSDP, and have consulted the nation’s leading experts on amnesty policies in order to draft medical amnesty guidelines for Reed. We implemented these guidelines for Fall 2011 and will evaluate the amnesty program throughout the 2011–12 academic year. The guidelines are available for Reed community members to review at http://www.reed.edu/student_services/aod_response/index.html.

Enforcement
Like education, prevention, health promotion and therapeutic support, consistent enforcement is central to Reed’s AOD plan. With the use of PHAs, Night Owls, and medical amnesty, we have set the stage for students to act honorably by preventing and responding to AOD misuse and abuse on campus. The professional staff is prepared to fill any gaps that may persist between that which students are willing to do to keep Reed strong and safe, and that which must be done. One mechanism for filling such gaps is encapsulated in the updated AOD response plan, available for review by Reed community members on the student services website.

As stated in the preamble to the AOD Response Plan, the existing Reed College Drug and Alcohol Policy and the Health and Wellness Plan Relating to Alcohol and Other Drug Use at Reed (Implementation Plan) describe a process for evaluating the relative seriousness of an AOD violation. The AOD Response Plan seeks to further clarify the ways in which Reed’s Honor process serves as the primary mechanism for addressing AOD violations. The Honor process allows for addressing AOD violations with graduated levels of response that focus whenever appropriate on mediation and restorative justice, as well as judicial action and/or sanctions.

Of course, along with our ongoing commitment to the Honor Principle we continue to thoughtfully and consistently enforce local, state, and federal drug and alcohol laws and Reed’s Drug and Alcohol Policy. Over the past academic year we have seen a significant increase in documented violations of said policy. There is no compelling reason to believe that there has been a significant increase in AOD use or abuse, so we are left to surmise that our current enforcement practices are more effective in identifying and documenting AOD violations than were previous ones. Community safety and the VP/DoS office have streamlined documentation and response processes, assigned a hierarchy for staff involvement, and more evenly distributed the burden of one-to-one meetings with students who have been cited for violating the Drug and Alcohol Policy. These modifications should result in fewer delays between citation and follow up, and an overall improvement in the integrity of internal systems.

As a key component of their effort to keep the campus safe, community safety staff has continued in their efforts to nurture a healthy and mutually respectful relationship with the student body. These efforts include but are in no way limited to

  • community safety officer (CSO) root beer float event and Segway rides during the week of orientation;
  • new CS team photo posters in all residence halls and other select locations;
  • weekly CSO profiles in the Quest;
  • CSO liaisons for Honor Council, senate, pool hall, and others;
  • CS staff working closely with Night Owls.

We will continue to employ our current enforcement approach as an integral component of Reed’s aforementioned three-pronged AOD strategy, and invite community comment on the various aspects of the implementation strategy.