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MUSIC
It's really the biggest choice drug at my school.
MUSIC
The problem is the parties over the weekends,
the people that feel that they have to fit in and they have
to be cool and therefore they go and they get wasted.
MUSIC
Whenever an accident has been there from drinking and
driving, there's causes almost all over before, where I live.
Texas often leads the nation in every problem
that you can have related to under-aged drinking.
Probably the biggest challenge is a financial challenge,
and that our state is so huge.
MUSIC
We're very large and very vast,
and we are very different geographically.
And so despite our cultural differences,
which are vast as well, we may also be challenged by
our topography in a number of counties and that whether
we're rural or urban or coastal
or great plains or along the border.
MUSIC
In Texas schools alcohol is the most commonly used substance.
About two-thirds of our youth, grade 7 through 12,
have experimented with alcohol.
And about 20 percent of 8th graders and 50 percent of
12th graders are current users, had a drink in the past month.
The use of alcohol is not uncommon
unfortunately among youth today.
It is the number one drug of choice
for youth across the country.
But certainly we were concerned in Grand Prairie  when we saw
numbers that were exceeding the state and national average.
My older son who did die August 3, 1999,
it was his 21st birthday.
And there are some of the traditions of
trying to drink their age in shots,
but that is not what Michael was doing that night.
In fact, when I show you the kinds of shots,
I can't even fathom him having 21,
because these weren't one ounce or one and a quarter ounce
shot glasses - these were four-ounce shot glasses.
And he had approximately nine of those.
I do have a demonstration that I had done with
the Texas House of Representatives,
our state legislature,
when there were two bills before a committee being considered.
One had to do with the amount being served as well as
the hour that those turning 21 should be served.
But I wanted to make an impression with the amount of
the alcohol that was consumed, not over an extended period,
but in a matter of 30 to 45 minutes.
It is about how much and how fast and that's the part that
parents may not be aware of.
There are frequently are situations where not only
are the kids drinking and partying among themselves,
they're doing so with the support and help of the adults
in our population as well.
What's going on here?
We're just having a...
a birthday party for my little brother.
In the state of Texas there is an office called
Furnishing Alcohol to a Minor.
And it's anybody who furnishes alcohol to someone
whose under the age of 21 can be arrested.
You're having a party for your brother
providing alcohol for under-aged…
Yeah, but I mean I'm being responsible,
I mean if they're not driving home tonight…
It's whoever furnishes alcohol, so one minor furnishing alcohol
to another minor can be arrested for that.
I'm 16, I'm almost 17 now.
You here, is everybody here is going to get a citation…
It's a class A misdemeanor punishable for
up to one year in jail and/or four thousand dollar fine.
And that's something that goes on their record depending on
the type of degree that they're going for.
For instance, if they're an education major they're
not going to be hired as a teacher because that's
actually contributing to the delinquency of a minor and
they're not going to get a job.
Fortunately this is not a ticketable offense,
I need you turn around, you're under arrest.
I think, with the mixed messages that there's two ways
to approach it, and one is to, for youth
to be great educators of adults.
And they will be the first to tell you well you tell me
not to do it, yet you make it easy for me to get it.
So the way that we like to utilize youth is for them
to give voice to the problem and to empower adults,
so to speak, with this knowledge.
Those seniors at prom, they feel bullet-proof;
they're feeling invincible; they're about to graduate;
they feel like full adults; they can vote.
Why can't they drink, you know?
And then you go and the school hands them a glass
used for drinking champaign.
And what does that tell a kid?
It says oh, wow, I can really go out and do this now;
even the school's telling me I can do it.
And so what we're trying, what we have told the board,
we have told our district is
that we do not want this anymore.
So when the youth brought it to us we embraced this change.
The more that we as adults and communities accept youth's
ability to be empowered, the better off we are.
MUSIC
Each year at Texas State we have approximately,
probably five to eight hundred students that come through
our class that violate alcohol policy on campus here.
MUSIC
Normally within the dorms, it might be a noise violation
or something like that, that it starts out with.
Oh hey… What's up… open up.
Once the police enter the room with the resident assistant,
you know, alcohol is found and the police are there.
So if there's alcohol found there
then the police would note that.
I want you to standup right here.
On our campus we do have several residential areas and we do
see alcohol abuse on campus and we do see under aged drinking.
For us it's… it's no longer hey, pour it out
and go back to your dorm room.
It's we're going to give them citations.
We're going to give them the court appearance citations
where they have to go in front of the judge.
We believe in… our philosophy is education and we try to
make it developmental for each student.
But generally speaking a student has to take
a minor in possession course.
We ask them to do sort of an online educational program
that they do themselves, and take a little quiz.
Sometimes we ask them to do a reflection paper.
Sometimes we ask them to do some community service.
It just depends on what their issue is.
I think that one of the largest problems for our campus,
or challenges is that we are still in
this commuter college mentality.
We have 27 thousand students, approximately three live
on campus, three thousand, and then you have the outskirts.
So for our particular commuter campus,
I think a worry is impaired driving.
It could be whether it's drugs or alcohol.
So I think that's a challenge.
The community is addressing it, the UTSA community is.
They're part of the coalition, the PD,
the Shrilling (phs.) areas.
The Texas Department of Health Services implemented in 2005
a college survey which really gave us a good profile
or a snap shot of our problems.
81 percent of our students receive alcohol from
someone older, older student, which is against our laws.
Our social host laws are very strict in Texas.
77 percent go to neighborhoods now and have private parties.
Our alcohol use on college campus is very low cause many of
our campuses now have restricted or banned alcohol on campus,
like several of them have completely substance-free halls.
So as a result, they're going off campus.
They're going in the community, into the neighborhood.
So that makes it more important for us to
work with our community and our collaborations.
Well the biggest thing is that we collaborate as a state
for partners in prevention to reduce underage and high-risk
drinking on college campuses, and also collaborate with
the community to work with the community.
And so we do this all over the State of Texas.
We have over 170 institutions of higher education in Texas.
And collaborating with our state agencies,
Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission agreed to
let us have symposiums.
And through this symposium we bring in
20 campuses a year and a team of four.
We're bringing the alcohol drug coordinator, a law enforcement,
a judicial officer and a housing director.
And we do a two-day training, send them home with
a strategic plan on evidence-based strategies
to put on their campus.
When a freshman comes to UTSA
they are required to do alcohol EDU.
That is the first thing that they partake in.
It's an online educational, alcohol education course
that our 4500 freshmen have to take before school starts.
If they don't complete it they get an academic hold,
so therefore they do it.
So that just kind of spring forwards them into UTSA.
From there, our PD department
does an alcohol 101 in housing, that's required.
When they get sanctions through counseling or JA
they have to take that course also.
Then your residence halls immediately have programs.
We do several different programs with the peers.
What we have found is that whenever the peers work with
the students, the students obtain more information,
they can relate more than if someone's standing up here
preaching to them that's an older adult.
So we do use the peer educators in all of our programming.
So when you're talking to students
about alcohol and you just…
Well what we do here at Texas State
is we do training, resident assistance.
Our peer educators and our staff talk to the resident assistance
about underage drinking, how to approach them on the importance
of reporting it, and looking out for our students
in terms of alcohol use.
And here at Texas State we also have alcohol-free housing,
except for one residence hall where you have to be 21 and up.
But all the rest of them, we have over 20 residents halls.
They're alcohol-free.
Being a peer educator to me is not only providing information
for students on campus, but it really is having a passion
and a love for helping other people on your university,
your peers get the information that would be helpful for
them to live healthy lifestyles.
I think the biggest, most impactful part of our programs
is that we're non-judgmental.
We tell them right off the bat we're not here to tell you
not to drink; we're not here to tell you to not do this;
we're just here to give you the information you need
to make the choices that are best to you.
And I think when you leave students up with the ability
to make their own choices they will make better choices
cause they feel that they're in control, that they're in power.
People complaining about your drinking, passing out…
Somebody gets an alcohol violation
so they have to go through a process where they
are screened to see if they're at risk
of having a problem with alcohol in the future.
And those who are get counseling.
So that they don't wait until there's a significant
problem to try and address it.
They try to intervene, do this brief intervention screening.
PARTY, SIREN AND MUSIC
And so other things that we're doing is,
we have a dance team and our dance team is called Hype.
This is a group of young high school
and college kids, early college kids.
And this group comes together to take the message of prevention
out to the communities, out to public schools,
out to big events.
MUSIC
Well what we do is we do about a 45 to an hour show.
In that show we have dancer teams.
The songs that we pick have different messages and
relay different messages already in the writing
and in the performance.
We stop in between those performances and give
a reenactment of a situation that I took from another child,
or that we've manufactured around stories that we've
heard that go on in the schools.
And the children act those out.
MUSIC
I oftentimes impress my parents by telling them
things that they don't know,
like facts about drugs and alcohol and everything.
And they learn from me like I learned
from them when I was younger.
But I feel like I know a lot more than them.
MUSIC
But yeah, I've never drank alcohol and
I've never done any kind of drugs,
but I've gone to parties and I've seen what it does.
And I could tell them that it's not,
it's not a positive place for them to be
when they even get to my age.
MUSIC
We looked at the 2003 as our baseline.
2006 we look at it to see if we were improving.
We had made over a 10 percent reduction
in every drinking category.
And our national average dropped
from six drinks per week to 3.5 per week.
So we've made some real progress with the collaboration of
the colleges and the community coalitions
and the state agencies.
So first we have to come to accept that we have
a very big problem related to alcohol in Texas.
Once we have it on the map, then we can…
they're motivated already.
So the state is, communities are,
individuals are - that's when we can start using the initiatives,
but the motivation has to come first.
MUSIC
While the amount that young people are drinking
might be going up, some of the other stats are changing.
And so what we know is that we have a reduction overall of
the number of young people drinking.
That kindergarten is not too young and college is not to old
to be talking to our children about choices,
especially when it comes to underage drinking.
Really the bottom line is this; that
underage drinking is everybody's problem, and
it's solution is everybody's responsibility.