SAFE RIDES Drive Alcohol Awareness Month
Rider University students will be able to get a “safe ride” back to the Lawrenceville campus for free through the new SAFE RIDES Program thanks to a new venture sponsored by Rider Initiative for Substance-abuse Education (RISE) and Student Government Association.
The program, funded by a local grant for Alcohol Education and Abuse Prevention, is in partnership with Rider and Yellow Cab, the largest taxi service in Mercer County. Cab rides will be available from Ewing, Lawrence Township and Trenton. To use the service, students can call 609-396-8181 and present a valid Rider ID.
“Students are encouraged to use the program not necessarily just when they have had too much to drink, but anytime they might need a safe ride back to campus,” said Mark Fisher, Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist at Rider.
The SAFE RIDES Program was introduced during the kickoff week of Alcohol Awareness Month, held from March 27 through April 3. In an effort to continue to educate the University community about the dangers of alcohol abuse and binge drinking, RISE also offered a series of events that showcased talent and speakers, as well as supplied students with safer alternatives to binge drinking.
At the beginning of the week, one of college students’ most prized, but limited, possessions – cash – was up for grabs at “Rider’s Got Talent,” the first university wide talent show, held in a packed BLC Theater on Thursday, March 27. The talent show, co-sponsored by RISE and Peer Health On Campus Unites Students (PHOCUS) featured 12 acts, ranging from a cappella singing to dancing to juggling. Prizes were awarded to the top three acts of the show.
“We wanted to present a program about what students can do without drugs or alcohol,” Fisher said. This message shined through in the performances of the talented individuals. “They probably all agreed that if they were involved in drugs and alcohol they couldn’t perform their talents.”
The talent show was one of many activities to kick off the month. On Monday, March 31, the University held a moment of silence in the BLC Theater to honor the memory of Gary Devercelly, a Rider student who died of alcohol poisoning on March 30, 2007. Dr. Adrienne Keller, director of research for the National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia, then presented Defining Social Norms and Harm Reduction Theories.
By defining the social norms theory, Keller showed how college students misperceive alcohol use among their peers, and explained their tendency to overestimate how much people are participating in unhealthy behaviors, such as binge drinking. That kind of thinking lets the unhealthy behavior go unchallenged, and the non-normal behavior becomes the norm, Keller concluded.
Choices made about alcohol can also have a direct impact on your brain and behavior, as Dr. Stephanie Golski shared in This is your brain on drugs – the real story, a seminar held on Thursday, April 3.
“I’m not going to demonize drugs,” Golski said to a group of students and staff. “But the reality is people are making bad choices.”
Drugs, including alcohol, affect a brain’s lobes, which are responsible for different functions, and neurotransmitters, chemicals that cells communicate through, inside the brain. For example, frontal lobes control our decision-making. A frontal lobe is a person’s Jiminy Cricket, as Golski calls it, and is that little voice that tells a person what’s good and bad. So if someone is under the influence of alcohol, the frontal lobe mechanism turns off and your judgment is affected, explained Golski.
Other events included staged readings by Studio 3E, a new peer education theatre group on campus; the Health Fair on the Westminster campus and Alcohol Awareness Night in the Pub. The e-Chug survey, which gives individuals a personal assessment of their relationship with alcohol, was also promoted throughout the week. To take the survey, go to https://interwork.sdsu.edu/echug2/?id=Rider&hfs=true.
“Having a whole week of activities like this was a successful way to get our message to our students,” Fisher said. “We really got our message out there, and RISE became more visible.”
