The misuse and abuse of drugs and alcohol on college campuses has become more excessive, and “nearly one in four full-time students nationwide meets the medical threshold for substance abuse or dependence,” according to a report highlighted in the March 15, 2007 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
That’s two and a half times the same rate in the general population.
The study from which these statistics were quoted is entitled “Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities” and was conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Among other details, this study indicates that “49 percent, or 3.8 million full-time college students, abuse drugs, engage in binge drinking or do both.”
Michael Juliano: on the dance floor, without a beer
CCO staff worker Michael Juliano regularly attends fraternity parties at California University of Pennsylvania—but he never drinks.“I was out there on the dance floor, acting like a fool, really having a good time,” he says. “One of the guys noticed that I didn’t have a beer in my hand, and he commented on it. I told him, ‘I don’t have to have a drink to have a good time.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Really? Huh.’ It confused him, but it opened up a great conversation.”
These kinds of conversations happen a lot at the TKE house at Cal U. Because Michael pledged that same fraternity during his own undergraduate years at Waynesburg College, he was welcomed into the fold when he arrived at California’s campus as a CCO staff member.
“I lived that partying kind of lifestyle when I first got to college,” he says. “I decided to pledge the frat because I wanted to find a place to fit in, to belong. The drinking was a built-in part of that culture. But when I started hanging out with the CCO group at Waynesburg, I realized the partying wasn’t filling the need in me I was hoping it would.”
Those are the kinds of insights Michael is able to share with the fraternity guys he hangs out with now. “I ask them where they want to be in 10 years, what is their favorite memory, what they think about spirituality and religion, what they know about Jesus,” he says. “I enjoy talking with them and finding out what they think about life issues. They don’t often have people asking them these kinds of questions.”
Michael is grateful to have the opportunity to show these students that there’s more to life—much more—than what they’ll find in a keg of beer.