[Music]
What brought it all together was an incident of an older
gentleman who was working at a bar on Main Street and was
returning home from work that night.
He walked past an off-campus party.
Nobody knows exactly what transpired, but we do know is
that a student at the party hit him;
he fell and banged his head on the sidewalk and
sustained permanent injuries.
And it was at that point that I kind of drew a line in
the sand here and said, "This is not going to happen again;
we need to change the culture."
When Jonathan Gibralter set foot on the campus of
Frostburg State University in 2006,
he knew, as all university presidents do,
that student alcohol use was common and often excessive.
What he didn't know was that Frostburg's reputation as
a party school only scratched the surface of the profound
consequences of student alcohol use, both on
campus and in the surrounding community.
Not only did Gibralter change the culture on
Frostburg's campus, he changed the community.
In just 3 years, Gibralter and his President's Alcohol Task
Force reduced high-risk drinking at Frostburg by 5 percent.
To do that meant providing strong leadership in
getting ahead of the problem.
In this episode of "Lessons Learned," we share the story of
how one devoted college president balanced his
professional responsibilities with his personal mission to
separate campus culture from underage drinking culture.
We will also share the lessons learned from applying
evidence-based underage drinking prevention
strategies and tactics in a university setting.
[Music]
I also recognize that there are many, many priorities that
college and university presidents have.
College presidents must promote academic standards, provide
a positive campus experience for students, and maintain
a good relationship with the surrounding community.
With so much to do and often limited resources,
preventing student alcohol misuse isn't always
a top concern for some presidents.
It seems that for people at my level, college and university
presidents, where I often see them get engaged,
it's after a tragedy.
And that is the tragedy.
I knew I couldn't do it alone.
So I brought together a group of people that I called the
Alcohol Task Force; it consisted of people on
our faculty, staff, students.
Over time it evolved to include
people from the local community--some landlords,
property owners, law enforcement.
Dr. Gibralter really had a vision of what he wanted
this institution to be like.
He wanted to increase our academic profile.
He wanted to increase the safety on campus.
For President Gibralter and his staff, preventing student
alcohol misuse isn't just about taking a stand.
It's about ensuring that Frostburg's best and brightest
students have the opportunity to shine.
That's why the President's Alcohol Task Force developed
a comprehensive three-tiered strategy on prevention,
engagement, and enforcement.
[Music]
Preventing alcohol misuse is the focus of many efforts on
college and university campuses.
The hope is that by educating students about the consequences
of alcohol use, they will choose not to drink.
And at Frostburg, they have both requirements and alcohol-free
programs to encourage students to get the facts and
know the risks.
We're coming into our sixth year of targeted
student athlete prevention programs.
We also target our freshmen students using AlcoholEdu®,
which is a nationally recognized online prevention program for
freshmen students and also matriculating transfer students.
If students do not pass AlcoholEdu®,
I place a hold on their account, so that way they're not able to
register for classes and complete things of that nature.
Many people believe that underage drinking is a normal
part of the college experience.
Some students at Frostburg said they drink because there is
simply nothing else to do.
But Gibralter and his team were conceding nothing.
"Late at Lane" is a gathering at the Lane University Center,
which is our student center.
They have food and activities, music;
it's pretty much like a party without the alcohol.
As a university, you need to make sure the activities that
you're hosting are appealing to students, or no one is going to
come and it's going to be for a lost cause.
[Music]
With so many students living off campus, part of Frostburg's
engagement strategy needed to focus not only on students,
but also on members of the surrounding community.
The Frostburg Community Coalition is a division
underneath the President's Alcohol Task Force.
What the Coalition does is, it focuses on the community.
So the coordinator has gone to local high schools and
middle schools to talk about the risks of
alcohol as well as other drugs.
And they also have partnered with local alcohol vendors and
bars, as far as making sure that
they aren't selling alcohol to underage students.
Some of our successes have been that we've been able to
fund some overtime hours for law enforcement.
That's been huge.
We've had successes with our compliance checks.
We are at our highest compliance rate in the last 3 years with
our Frostburg area establishments.
The biggest benefit was the TIPS training for our employees.
We were able to send them to classes that was organized by
the Coalition at a convenient time for all of them, and
they were able to get their certifications, and it was just
a great thing for us.
Dr. Gibralter definitely had his hands full, but education and
engagement weren't enough to successfully
curb student drinking.
He needed partners, and he found them.
Reaching across the aisle to the local police force,
certainly starting with the Frostburg City police force.
And looking at how our university police department
could actually connect and collaborate with
the local law enforcement agencies.
[Music]
Our mission is not to write as many citations as we can.
Our mission is to keep these students as safe as we can.
But sometimes that citation is a real "aha" moment for a young
person as well, or even just that negative interaction with
law enforcement, because often they haven't had that before.
A key tool the police department uses is called Knock and Talks.
It's a simple way to let students and other
community members know that the police are there and
have information that could help them avoid
dangerous situations that involve alcohol.
Our goal is to interact with our community in a number of ways
to educate them, right?
This is a university, so the university's
product is education.
And within the university is the police department, and
our product is public safety, but a big part of that is being
a part of the educational process.
So we have funded three times the amount of police patrols in
the past year than we did the previous year.
We saw a dip and a decrease in every single category.
Physical assaults, breaking and enterings.
Every single category we saw decreases in.
With so much being accomplished at Frostburg, there are many
elements of effective prevention that campuses can replicate.
[Music]
First and foremost, again, I think that leadership is key.
We've always said that's one of the lessons
that has to be there.
And there has to be some financial resources allocated,
specifically to be able to be successful in any initiative.
Even if it's a small amount of money,
you do what you can with that money.
The most important building block is to recognize that
you must have a collaborative effort, and that collaborative
effort must be based on honest relationships.
We're not the only college and university in
the country that has had success.
There are others.
Through the Dartmouth High Risk Drinking Collaborative and
the Maryland High Risk Drinking Collaborative,
we've seen success.
Dr. Gibralter recently accepted a new position at
Wells College in Aurora, New York.
But he's confident that his priorities about preventing
student drinking have taken root.
We're preparing our data, we're preparing it to really
be able to demonstrate to our new president
that this is important.
And we're also tying it back to retention and attrition.
I have been thanked so many times by students, because
at the end of the day, they don't want to receive
a degree from a college or university
that's perceived to be a party school.
They want to get their degree from a school that is perceived
to be a very serious academic institution.
And maybe this is just me, I don't know, but for me
personally, I never forget why I'm here.
We're trying to create our future through the lives of
these young people.
And if we lose sight of that, then running a college and
university just becomes a business.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
These words spoken by Benjamin Franklin ring true across
the campus of Frostburg State University.
Dr. Jonathan Gibralter's investment in prevention
laid the foundation for an effective, coordinated,
community-wide effort to reduce the harms of underage drinking.
The approaches you've heard about today are based on
a growing body of research on underage drinking prevention.
Results like the ones at Frostburg are possible
on any campus.
They can be achieved through a combination of individual,
environmental, and system-wide efforts.
In order to implement successful prevention efforts,
we need strong campus leaders who are willing to
make the health and safety of their students a top priority.
Personal commitment from a campus president and other
senior administrators can be the driving force behind
success in reducing high-risk drinking.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
shares this commitment.
At SAMHSA, we know that:
Prevention Works.
Treatment is Effective.
People Recover.
[Music]
For more infomation >> The Vice-Chancellor's annual 1st October address to the University - Duration: 5:13. 
For more infomation >> 帶你們突襲哥大宿舍😲😯😮🤭Columbia University Dorm Tour - Duration: 6:08. 
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