Alcohol Programs
 

Does your organization have any required alcohol programming for your members and/or new members? If so, was the program created by your national org or did they pay an outside company for it?

We all must do the Alcohol 101 program. It's a CD Rom that we have to explore and then write a response to it. The responses are turned into the Greek Life Office. The school gives copies to every Pledge Ed.

IHQ requires participation in the alcohol.edu course.

It's about 3 hours long and can be done on your own time. As an advisor, I've done it. It was a decently informative program but didn't tell me anything I didn't know.

AGD has a program called "Get Real: Thinking About Drinking" which is more of an interactive workshop to explore how a chapter as a whole, and individual members, view drinking.. what are the attitudes, what are the hazards, etc. It goes beyond just quoting statistics and has a focus of moderation and control, rather than prohibition. There is a smart way to include alcohol but that message doesn't get out very often.

Dee

Delts Talking About Alcohol (DTAA) has paid Delts who travel to every Delt chapter once a year. Every Delt must take the program.

It was the first alcohol awareness (not anti-drinking) program in the Greek world to get government support in its development. I have taken it as an advisor, and it's pretty well done.

We have shared it with a number of national fraternities and sororities who use it under their own names.

ETA it sounds very much like AGD's above. It may be that Alpha Gam is one of the nationals using DTAA -- but I don't know for sure. They may have developed their own program -- they do sound very similar, though.

Here is more information:

http://www.delts.org/programs/dtaa/

It sounds like they have similar components, but ours was developed by our Collegiate Programming Team. Various members of the Volunteer Services Team have been trained to do it as well as all of the members of our Collegiate Programming Team. We tend to identify chapters or campuses that need it most. We also have a Panhellenic/general group version that is a little less intense that can be done if the need is identified. We also have one called See Through the Haze to a Clearer Purpose. I was lucky enough to be trained in both programs last February and found I think they are very realistic. Our other big program is Double Vision, which was developed in conjunction with Lambda Chi Alpha and addresses date rape type situations.

Dee

At my school all the Greeks have to go to an Alcohol Awarness meeting next week. Hopefully it won't be a total snoozefest and people might learn a few things.