The Daily O’Collegian

Every year, a new group of students arrives at Oklahoma State.

For many of those students, their arrival at the university is the first time they are away from their parents, the first time they are on their own and the first time they have to make difficult decisions without relying on familiar faces for guidance.

When students make the wrong choices with alcohol, the OSU Police Department steps in.

“I think the main policy that we have here is that we’re going to enforce any state laws that exist with respects to alcohol,” police Lt. Mark Shearer said. “We also try to assist with the enforcement of university policy when it comes to the use and possession of alcohol on campus.”

However, with a limited number of officers and resources, OSUPD cannot always place as much emphasis on liquor law violations as it would like.

A special department of OSUPD, called C.K.’s Program, used to focus on campus alcohol safety enforcement, funded through the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office. In 2006, changes around campus led OSUPD to move the emphasis of those funds’ use from alcohol to traffic safety.

“Our enrollment numbers were up; we had an increase in the number of construction projects here on campus, which reduced the number of parking spaces available,” Shearer said. “It also reduced the size of roadways that were accessible by people.”

When the department shifted its focus from alcohol, it had visible effects.

From 2003-05, OSU had an average of 15 arrests related to liquor law violations on campus, according to the Office of Postsecondary Education. In 2006, when OSUPD’s policy change went into effect, there were 51 arrests for liquor law violations.

In addition, campus had an average of 69 total disciplinary actions related to alcohol from 2003-05. That number jumped to 317 in 2006. Shearer said the 2007 data has not yet been fully compiled.

Shearer said the numbers were lower in previous years because students in violation of the law were more aware of the danger of being caught when there was more focus on alcohol safety.

“When you have an officer that is targeting, or actually watching and enforcing those particular laws, obviously the number of arrests are going to be reduced,” he said. “There’s a heightened awareness. Everybody knows that, ‘Hey, if I’m caught out here, I’m going to be subject to being arrested.’”

Steven Wooley, a philosophy junior, said he has noticed changes in students’ concerns about being caught for violations during his time at OSU.

“I remember when I was a freshman, drinking on campus was very taboo and secretive,” Wooley said. “Now, some people are pretty open with it. Maybe that’s just the people I know getting bolder as they get older, but I think there’s something to it.”

Despite the 2006 spike in liquor law violations, Shearer said the department still believes focusing on traffic safety is important.

“We felt that in the best interest of everybody involved, we need to change that focus so we can hopefully reduce somebody from being involved in an accident and injured or killed,” Shearer said.

The number of other people and groups that raise alcohol awareness help OSUPD make the change, he said.

Linda Myers, a counselor for the Alcohol & Substance Abuse Center, is one such person. University Counseling Services started the center three years ago to help identify and counsel students with substance abuse problems.

Although many students are self-referrals, some are sent to Myers after facing disciplinary issues.

“If they get in trouble at the courts, then they have to do an alcohol and drug evaluation,” Myers said. “If they get in trouble on campus, the student judicial office sends them here to get evaluated to see if they have an alcohol or drug problem, and if so, what level it would be. I then make any recommendation I think they might need.”

The evaluation consists of three questionnaires and a face-to-face interview.

“By those evaluations, we can put the clients into one of five levels, the first level being they have no substance abuse problem, the most severe level being that they need inpatient treatment, and anything in between could be counseling or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or self-help meetings,” Myers said.

Myers said she meets with 1,200 to 1,500 students each school year, though many are there for other substance abuse problems, not necessarily alcohol.

Josh Baker was referred to meet counseling services during his freshman year as part of a disciplinary action for being a minor caught with alcohol on campus. Baker has since left OSU and lives in Indiana, but he said he doesn’t think a lack of awareness is the problem for most students.

“I don’t think it really matters how much they focus on warning students, some people just like to drink,” Baker said. “And as long as they don’t drive after that, I don’t see a problem with it.”

Myers said there is a problem though, as more students seem to be drinking too heavily.

“There’s also a trend in a lot of the binge drinking; I see that changing rapidly,” she said. “Drinking eight, 10 beers at a time, drinking three or four times a week. The students don’t really see that that’s binge drinking because to them, that’s normal drinking.”

Nevertheless, Shearer said he believes alcohol violations on campus will go down. Although he said he didn’t have the data for 2007, he said if he had to speculate, he thinks the violations went down last year.

“I would say that it’s probably been a little bit less,” Shearer said. “The reason I’m saying that, and the basis that I’m using, is that overall the numbers of cases we worked this year, as opposed to the last year, is a little bit less.

“So consequently I would assume that also the alcohol crimes have reduced as well.”

Shearer said that he thinks in a few years, the department will be able to look back and see that 2006 was a statistical aberration for alcohol-related crimes, the product of the initial difficulties of the policy change but not a long-term trend.

“I don’t think the numbers will continue,” he said. “I think when you take a look at years past, and I’ve been here for 15 years, there’s always been peaks and valleys in that statistical information.

“I remember back in 1996, we arrested 170 people for DUI. That was a major spike because the previous year was only like 85, and the year after that it dropped down to about 75. You’re always going to see peaks and valleys when you’re looking at statistical information.”

In order to keep those violations down, Myers said education and widespread cooperation will be key.

“I think we need to do a lot more,” Myers said. “We’re looking to do a lot more prevention programs in the next year. We want to make students aware that we have trained counselors that can help, and we want to have trained peers that can go out and help students.”