BU Greek life continues safety, alcohol training

As part of the first-ever mandatory alcohol safety training for Boston University Greek life, sororities and fraternities have been holding required follow-up sessions since the Oct. 23 presentation that are expected to finish up by the end of this week, officials said.

The BU Greek life community gathered in Metcalf Ballroom on the second floor of the George Sherman Union a little over two weeks ago, where University of Washington professor and researcher Jason Kilmer, assistant director of UW’s Health and Wellness for Alcohol in the Division of Student Life, spoke to students about alcohol-related risks.

“By doing the follow-ups, the goal was to bring that message to each individual group, and find out how it resonated in individuals and how those lessons could be applied within individual groups,” said Assistant to the Dean of Students Kat Cornetta.

BU Student Health Services Director of Wellness and Prevention Services Elizabeth Douglas said in an email that each chapter of BU Greek life held the subsequent discussion to provide students with a space to talk about how their organization members can better look out for one another. The groups were supposed to have held the follow-up discussions within a week of the presentation.

“These session highlighted their role as a bystander and the expectation that members intervene and get assistance when potential alcohol emergencies are identified,” Douglas said.

While each discussion varied by chapter, a dean or administration moderated each session, and many took on the form of a large roundtable dialog, Cornetta said. “They went over a review of what the original speaker had spoken about, and then had discussions about what they do as a group, what activities they might do as a group that might be able to change or how they could go about being more cognizant and responsible in their activities,” she said.  “How the discussion was structured varied not only by the group, but also by the administrator who moderated it.”

DOS officials have also provided alcohol safety training for other student groups on campus, Cornetta said.

“It’s important for every organization and every student to think critically about their behavior on a number of levels, and Greek life was not the only subset of organizations that we’ve asked to consider their behavior and to consider what they can do to make a more responsible community,” she said. Last year, each official student organization on campus was required to send a member of its executive board to bystander training. However, this year’s safety program for Greek life differs from bystander training because it focuses less on role-play and more on decisions individuals can make collectively to create a safer environment for their organization.

“In this alcohol training that we did for Greek life, it was multiple sessions, and it was more about the bigger picture and self-reflection, and [it involved] less activity,” she said.

The program, created by BU’s Student Activities Office, reinforces the DOS’s goal of creating a safe and healthy community for students, Cornetta said.

“From a Dean’s Office perspective, we’re just interested in every student and every organization and making sure that they’re responsible in any activity that they do,” she said. “We really thought that what Student Activities put together to address responsibility with Greek life was a very good program.”

DOS officials hope the alcohol safety training helped members of Greek life to better understand how individual students’ choices impact one another.

“We want a community of good citizens,” she said. “[What] we hope that the speaker … and the follow-up sessions and discussions have really brought home is that we’re trying to build an excellent community where people watch out for each other.”