San Jose State leaves its students with very few resources to help them battle addiction.
The education and counseling SJSU offers its students about addiction is not adequate to help them leave harmful dependencies in the past.
SJSU has an Alcohol and Drug Addiction Prevention Committee that should be working hard to help the student community face these issues, but its website, which should guide students to their recent 2018-19 committee report, has not been updated
since 2017.
The university has a responsibility to consistently help its students understand and fight addiction, particularly because college students are a high-risk demographic.
According to the rehabilitation referral service Addiction Center, 31% of college students in the U.S. reported symptoms of alcohol abuse in 2019.
Students may struggle not only with alcoholism, but also with dependencies on stimulant drugs.
According to the Center on Addiction as of February, anywhere between 5-35% of college students have used prescription drugs, such as Adderall, commonly known as the “study drug,” without a prescription. Many use it with the assumption that it will help them focus during long hours of studying.
Not only are college students vulnerable to falling into harmful substance dependencies, but they are also often isolated and stressed, making it especially important for SJSU to tell them that help is available.
According to research by Sky Factor, an organization that assesses the success of academic policies, 58% of first-year college students feel separation and 50% feel distress, defined as feeling distant from a person, location or object – making it hard to function in classes.
New students are most at risk, especially those who leave behind friends and family at home to come to the Bay Area.
These students may use party culture and addictive substances as a crutch to help make it through the grind of student life.
A 1998 report from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study showed that four out of five fraternity and sorority members are binge drinkers.
The study described binge drinking as “male students who had five or more and female students who had four or more drinks in a row at least once in a two-week period (the 5/4 measure).”
It would be nearly impossible for the university to try and stop harmful party culture, but it does have to address the inevitable consequences that party culture promotes and recognize that students will need guidance to deal with the substances in which they are exposed.
It is hard enough for all students to find help with their addictions; but for students who do not have health insurance or cannot see a health care provider in Santa Clara County, it is vital that SJSU supplies these students with resources to help them
better themselves.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 7.2% of California residents do not have
health insurance.
SJSU has responded to students’ lack of health insurance by only supplying short consultations in a campus environment where consultation on any issue is hard to come by, let alone for a specific need like addiction.
Under non-pandemic circumstances, setting up a one-on-one appointment with a counselor from the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services office can take more than two weeks, with an eight-session limit for every academic year, leaving only one session per month, according to past Spartan Daily reporting.
Although SJSU offers 30-minute alcohol and drug consultations, these sessions are not frequent enough to keep up with students who are struggling with serious addictions affecting their everyday lives.
SJSU should follow in the footsteps of other colleges that have put more effort into educating students about addiction and helping them recover from it.
Fresno State offers “Bulldogs 4 Recovery,” a program run by the university to guide students to abstinence from the substances causing them problems.
Aside from a program to help students get back on their feet, there is also much more education at CSU Fresno than SJSU when it comes to addiction.
Fresno State offers a certificate in alcohol and drug studies that allows students to more thoroughly understand abusive tendencies that can coincide with substance addiction.
Getting college students to reconsider their drug and alcohol use is not an easy task, but SJSU needs to be ready to aid students who have nowhere else to turn when ready to get clean.
If the Student Wellness Center hired counselors dedicated to helping students leave addiction behind and raised awareness about this resource, students would know they are not on
their own.
With a combination of dedicated counselors and a program set up around education and rehabilitation, students could find help more easily and learn how to help their own communities.
Although SJSU’s current counseling leaves a lot to be desired, SJSU does require every student take a few Title IX tests during orientation about the risks of alcohol and drug use; however those tests are more geared toward the risks that come along with unsafe drinking, such as sexual violence, but skips over the outcome
of addiction.
SJSU students need more addiction education resources.
In theory, these Title IX orientation tests should grant students an entry-level understanding of the substance abuse problems, but students could easily click through the test without absorbing
the concepts.
These surface-level online modules that most students will treat as a meaningless chore do not make up for a lack of on-campus addiction counseling and education.
To effectively help students break their addictive cycles, SJSU needs to do more than the bare minimum when it comes to confronting addiction in young adults.
