The Olympian

Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: Campus

Olympic College is adopting a new approach to the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act with the implementation of the new Alcohol and Other Drugs Task Force, in hopes to keep the campus better informed of the many prevention strategies and resources available.
Gina Huston, dean of student development at OC, said some of the 2006 biennial review recommendations were that OC should form an AOD Task Force, conduct an assessment of alcohol and other drugs and increase visibility of policies and health risks publications.
"We want to make sure that we not just meet the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, we want to meet those and go a little beyond that in terms of programming and that kind of thing," said Huston.
The biggest task this year and the primary job of the task force will be to conduct for the first time, an assessment of Alcohol and Other Drug awareness through a confidential Core Survey that will be administered to OC students in the spring said Toni Hartsfield, OC director of student programs and leadership development.
Hartsfield said to get an accurate depiction for the OC campus, the task force would need to distribute 800 surveys to random students on campus.
"We'd like to have our survey match the demographics of our campus," said Hartsfield, "so we'd like to have it as proportional, or like we call it, as much of a cross-section as we can: a proportion of day time students, a proportion of evening students, a proportion of first-year students, second-year students."
Once the surveys are completed, Hartsfield said they are returned to The Core Institute to be analyzed.
"This survey will help us identify needs and what the faces of our students look like and the context of the issue of Alcohol and Other Drugs," said Hartsfield.
Huston said that the task force would be using the results of the survey to look for gaps so that they know where to focus their energy and programming. Designing more workshops that cater to students on campus AOD issues will be one of the priorities after the survey results are returned said Huston. A Feb. 27 Counseling Services Workshop, "Affected others: How to Cope with Someone's Substance Use," given by counselor Anthony Carson was the first of many workshops to be designed with substance abuse as the focus said Huston.
The new AOD Task Force will meet every other week to discuss issues. The committee consists of faculty, students and administration, and is co-chaired by Huston and Hartsfield.

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