A Community That Cares

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, a series brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Abuse Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: As we all know, the legal drinking age is 21. Same for other legal substances. Yet, young people at 17 or 18 are leaving home for college and are often greeted with more freedom and responsibility than they faced before.

Mike: And opportunity, and not that they didn't use substances prior to college, but certainly the opportunity. And I might say the consequences can sometimes be greater when you get to college. And that's the topic of our next two podcasts. I'm pleased today to have as our guest two members of the administration of the University of Minnesota Morris to discuss that transition.

Mike: Sandy Olson-Loy is Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Adrienne Conley is Associate Director for Residential and Community Life.

Mike: Welcome Sandy. Welcome Adrienne. How are you?

Sandy: Thanks very much, Mike. We're doing well. It's great to be with you.

Mike: Well, we're on a nice, beautiful fall day where it's about 90 degrees in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, so go figure, right?

Sandy: (laugh) Exactly.

Mike: Sandy, let's just start with you and tell us, because there's so many, when my kids went to college or in their senior year, you know, I got letters from every place... I didn't even know some places were colleges. So, can you tell us a little bit about the University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, pardon me, Morris?

Sandy: Sure, I would be happy to. We're a relatively young institution. We were founded in 1960 as a part of the University of Minnesota system, one of five campuses. And we've had the same mission for that whole time as a really focused, undergraduate centered, public liberal arts and sciences university. So we have about 1,100 students.

Sandy: Students are really engaged in campus life and pursue majors in the arts, the sciences, education and go on to do great things in the world.

Mike: How many of the students live on campus as opposed to commute?

Sandy: About half of our students overall live on campus, but we're really largely a residential population.

Sandy: So Morris is a rural community in west central Minnesota. We have about 5,000 people in the whole town. And our students live largely within, say 95 percent live within a mile of the campus. And about 95 percent of our first year students live on campus as well.

Mike: I'll get to the graduation and retention rate later because it's impressive, but do you have students who do two years or one year there and then transfer to U of M up in the cities?

Sandy: Not very many. Most people are committed to Morris and choose us as a great, really engaged campus within the University of Minnesota system. And we do have some students certainly that apply both to Morris and to the Twin Cities and decide often that they want more of a in person closely connected community where they know their faculty and staff by first name and their faculty and staff know them by first name as well.

Sandy: People feel like you're not a number here. Not that you necessarily do in the Twin Cities, but it's certainly a great big institution. And it just logistically takes a lot more time to get across campus. Here, everything's pretty closely connected. A lot of our students do go on to graduate professional schools on the Twin Cities campus.

Mike: Well, that would absolutely be true. I mean, some of the Big Ten schools now have upwards of 50,000 students enrolled, so you can't possibly know everybody.

Sandy: Right.

Mike: Adrienne, working in residential and community life, what means what for helping students and their families?

Adrienne: Yeah, I think that Sandy referenced about most of our, many of our students are living on campus when they're a new student to Morris. So more than 90 percent of our new students are living on campus. And I think really what that means is we're trying to become their home away from home. And so we talk about this being a second home and all of the things that they're learning to help establish, you know, independence living outside of the home, all the things that go into living independently, developing interdependence and creating community. So on our floors and the residence halls, we have upperclassmen who are hired on as community advisors who serve in leadership roles to help sort of serve as mentors and help with that transition from moving out from home and moving onto campus.

Mike: And Sandy, one of the big concerns for colleges, all colleges, is making sure students make good decisions, right? So they can progress academically and I'm so tired of arguing with people over my lifetime with this, but drugs or alcohol get in the way of academic progress. (chuckle) How does the university address that with incoming students and families?

Mike: I think we're going to talk to David, your admissions person or your orientation person later, but how do we address that? What do you want families to know?

Sandy: Well, one of the interesting things actually is to think about that college isn't (chuckle) like your parents or grandparents generation. We look at the data of students who are coming to college and what they've done before coming to our college campuses.

Sandy: And back in the day when I was in school, 75 percent of the students who responded to a big national survey that Morris has been a part of that's run by UCLA. 75 percent of them said that they drank beer or, wine or liquor in the year prior to coming to school. So that's a whole lot of underage drinking, right?

Sandy: Or entering first year students. By the turn of the century in 2000, that had dropped to about 50 percent of students saying they'd consumed alcohol prior to coming to college. And for our campus data in 2021, it shows about 25 percent of students had consumed either beer or wine or alcohol of other types before coming to college.

Sandy: So a really different dynamic. It's actually the part of the survey that shows the biggest change for us. So the messages about the risks of alcohol consumption have really gotten out to high school students and their families. And we're seeing a big change in that. And Morris is known as not being a party school.

Sandy: (chuckle) I'm happy to report, if you do a survey of Minnesota's party schools, we will never make the list. Which makes for a better job for Adrienne and for me in student affairs as the people who respond to all of that. So, I think one of the pieces to think about for your children is What is the atmosphere like on campus?

Sandy: And for us, students really value their sense of safety and well being at Morris, and we rank in the top one or two schools of a couple hundred who do a survey that Adrienne's team is a part of within residential life in terms of students sense of safety on our campus. And so alcohol consumption is sort of certainly a part of that, and you see disruptive behavior that interrupts not only the individual student who's making bad choices at their academics, but it also impacts their neighbors.

Sandy: And so the first piece I would say is to think about the kind of climate that you see on a college campus that your student might be looking at and be considering. So that would be number one from my perspective.

Mike: I want to go back to something you said just to make sure that people who are listening get it, because I do prevention all the time.

Mike: You and I, I'll lump you in the same generational box as I am, right? The statistic you use is about 75 percent of people used before college. In fact, for me, the legal drinking age was 18 when back then. And then by 2000, you said it had gone down. It had gone down. People don't know that.

Mike: They assume it's always high. And then since 2000, 2021, down again. And so kids are coming in relatively not naive, but making better decisions early on. So Adrienne, right? Then when they move into the dorms. And the temptation is there. And there are parties. How is that addressed with them in the dorms about the decisions they'll make?

Mike: And how do the, well, I would call them RAs. Did you say they're community advisors?

Adrienne: Yup.

Mike: Okay.

Adrienne: We call them Community advisors.

Mike: Okay. So I'll try to remember that. How do they address that with the students that are coming into the dorms?

Adrienne: Well, I think one of the first things we do is we offer a lot of Alternatives to drinking on the weekend.

Adrienne: So we have a lot of engagement opportunities for students to connect and build friendships on the floor during those times. And a lot of students might be wanting to go off campus on the weekends. And then we do a lot of training with the community advisors and our student hall directors on addressing some unhealthy behaviors that are going to have an impact on their classroom performance and healthy well being dynamic while they're on campus. And so we work really closely with our public safety officers who do a number of educational programs around alcohol and along with our counseling staff.

Adrienne: We do a lot of training with them as well. So that when we do identify issues in the community, we connect well with the students and we have, you know, different policies that pertain to why students can't be drinking on campus. But if we do have the rare cases where we are noticing a student's engaging in this behavior, drinking underage, public consumption or whatever, we are following up with them and having, you know, not an intervention, but a caring conversation on how to address that behavior. That we care for the student and how we want to get them connected to the appropriate resources to help see some of that behavior shift.

Mike: Yeah, and we'll talk about the intervention process in part two of this.

Mike: You know, I have to say, Adrienne, I'm glad you do that. I may have shared this on the podcast before, but when my daughter went to college, she's going to graduate in December. At a different university, I might add. Her first college, by the time she was talked to about any of what you just said, and was even interested in it by the time the RA in her case, had met with the dorm. It was four days after everybody moved in and all of the parties had already taken place. And the horse was well out of the barn at that point. And all of the students knew where they could go to buy stuff. And it affected her decision to stay there a great deal.

Mike: So. If we're going to leave the intervention piece, what is the, Sandy, I'll go back to you, what is the impact that you all see in administration of substance use, student substance use on success? What do you see?

Sandy: We are fortunate to be a part of the University of Minnesota system, so actually have data on that as well that shows, students who are high users of alcohol and participate in what's recognized as more binge drinking behavior, show lower GPAs and are less likely to be successful in college.

Sandy: It's not like rocket science, right? It's hard to party like a rock star and be a successful college student.

Mike: Adrienne, you know, sometimes when I have discussions with people, there's something I call the "I know a dude who" syndrome, right? All the students want to point to the "dude". Who seems to be able to do amazing things while under the influence, but that's not the norm, is it?

Adrienne: No, it really isn't the norm, and I think our students would also agree with that sort of perspective.

Mike: Yeah, when one of my own kids went to school, I said, you know, you can be friends with these folks and whatever, but I wouldn't get to know them real well because they may not be there after two or three years. And you know, that's the academic part.

Mike: Well, I want to ask you a question I've been dying to ask you this, either of you or both of you. I think you know where I'm going to go. If I just say August 1st, you know where I'm about to go? Uh, Yeah, bet. Minnesota became the latest in a long line of states that legalized recreational cannabis for those over the age of 21.

Mike: Now that includes some of your students, but many are still under the age of 21. So I'm interested, what, if anything, you've noticed since the law has changed, and how you all at the university level have discussed handling this.

Sandy: Well, I'm the lucky person who's communicated with our students about this as of last May when the law was first signed by Governor Walz in the state of Minnesota legalizing the use of marijuana for recreational purposes by adults age 21 and over.

Sandy: And the thing that we noted within the University of Minnesota, and which would be true for other universities as well, that we continue to follow federal cannabis laws aligned with the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act. And so nothing really changed for us on campus. We aren't having people growing cannabis in our residence halls or other places.

Sandy: That still is prohibited. Certainly if students are living off campus, they can make some of their own choices around that. And we have seen a a bit of an increase in the number of students who use cannabis over the last few years. It's been going up, not dramatically, not certainly at those levels that we were talking about alcohol before students came to campus back in my generation of college, but it has been growing up a bit the last few years as we see more legalization across the U.S. and for students coming to Morris from other communities. We also see more people, frankly dealing with mental health struggles and a great big increase in a doubling of the percentage of students who report that they've been diagnosed with a mental illness just over the last 10 years.

Sandy: And a lot of students who do choose to use cannabis and other substances, including alcohol, are often using that to self medicate themselves rather than seeking support for the underlying things that they're dealing with.

Mike: Yeah. And so Adrienne, if I get this right, then you're treating this much the same way that cigarettes are treated or nicotine, right?

Mike: It's, it may be legal, but you can't bring it into the dorms.

Adrienne: Correct. And I may have had a lot of thoughts leading into August 1st when I heard the news, but I think I'm happy to share. I really didn't see a big difference in any of the behavioral things. It really, was just more educational posters on this. No, you know, increase in reports or things being told to us about students using cannabis recreationally.

Mike: Well, and I think I, if I have this right, I think Minnesota is a little bit, well, while it's legal. You don't have a place to sell it yet, right?

Sandy: Correct. Just the the tribal nations that share geography with the state of Minnesota are able to sell currently.

Mike: Yeah, so you don't have the dispensaries that we see in other states just yet.

Sandy: No, correct.

Mike: That's great.

Mike: Well, and Sandy, as long as your graduation, I was looking at this, your graduation retention rates have stayed really consistent over the last decade.

Sandy: Yeah, it's been pretty high and we're recognized for having a lot of first generation students, students from low income backgrounds and other historically underserved and underrepresented populations. And so for us, that is a pride point for us. I would say since the pandemic, things have been disrupted on a lot of college campuses, including ours.

Sandy: And so we're seeing a bit of a dip in those first year student numbers in terms of those who are persisting to their second year and more students, I think, who are really looking at the value of college, their personal values, how expensive it is to be in college, and all of those things. And we know from all the data that's out there that college continues to be a really important choice for people's economic success and their well being overall. And so are working individually with students as well as overall to, to counter some of that and also with this year's first year class, Adrienne and Dave and others have been doing a lot to help support the connection building pieces because we know that too was disrupted for this generation of students who spent a lot of their formative high school years, formative from our perspective.

Sandy: On a Zoom session (chuckle) with people rather than doing some of the in person things. And so we know when college, when students go to college, you wonder if you're going to find your place and will you make friends and how will that work? And it's challenging always. And I think it's particularly challenging for this current generation of students.

Sandy: So we've really, Dave can tell you about cool things that they've been doing and Adrienne and ResLife as well, but have really upped our game to help build more friend making and connection building into our everyday life for students, as well as building more well being supports in overall, which is also another disruptor in college success.

Mike: Adrienne, I think Sandy makes a really good point. I'm in schools a lot and colleges a lot, and I hear from folks who work there that we saw a real dip in social skill development, as well as emotional coping development over the course of the pandemic. I think that's what Sandy was talking about.

Mike: And you certainly are aware of that inside the dorms or with your community advisors. So are they talking to the kids about that?

Adrienne: Yeah, during training this year, we sort of used the phrase going back to the basics and that's just getting to know the people who live on your floor and helping them introduce themselves to the people that they're living beside.

Adrienne: So helping do those introductions, finding things that they're interested in. Learning how to share, you know, a lounge together, like, how do you decide what to watch on the TV when there's five of you in the lounge? How do you share a refrigerator with 20 other first year students? So just some of those things that we, we don't want to take it for granted that the students are coming into the residence halls knowing how to do those things.

Adrienne: And so we're helping teach them those skills, how to live with each other in community.

Mike: Now, for those of you listening, if that seems, if you're a little bit older and that you go, "what?" Understand this is the reality, right? This is what we have to face inside schools. Why would you be good at something if you don't have to practice it and have not seen it before?

Mike: Sandy, I'll give you the walk off here. Nationwide enrollment is dropping. I think you alluded to that in your last comment. What challenges are you and your colleagues facing as student enrollment drops nationwide?

Sandy: I think we're worried for the next generation, really, and for our communities in terms of what the long range impact will be on a kind of devaluing of college and both what it brings to people individually and to their families and to the economic opportunities that it opens, but also to having people in our communities and in for us, the state of Minnesota who are ready to take on those leadership roles who are ready to be doctors and nurses and lawyers.

Sandy: We see shortages of people filling those roles, especially in rural communities and thinking about what this all means for down the road. Certainly we look at wanting to make sure that we maintain a healthy and vibrant community on our campus and that's our kind of day to day focus is Adrienne's been describing and how we're working to help students find connections with each other.

Sandy: But I think longer term, we're really concerned for our communities and for society within our state and across the country.

Mike: I think that that is being experienced almost universally at this point. Whenever I go online or see an article on something, shortages in just about every profession and trade are being noticed.

Mike: And sometimes I go into a place and go, "What are you all going to do for a living without an education?"

Sandy: Yeah, exactly. And you make a really good point on tech programs, too. I was talking to someone who was doing some work for us at our house, who was talking about there's no one to come in to take over the trades and the apprentice programs that you see in other countries we have never really built in the United States.

Sandy: And if you look at Minnesota, and I'm assuming Wisconsin, may be the same. If you look at our two year technical and community college enrollments, those have dropped off even more significantly than the smaller four year institutions are experiencing.

Mike: Yeah, and I don't know if Minnesota's experienced this, but in Wisconsin, they're dropping majors in four year colleges.

Mike: They're dropping two year campuses here, and I think that is the case nationwide as they look to pay the bills. as it goes.

Mike: Well, we will have part two of this shortly next week with three of your colleagues, but I wanted to take a moment and thank the two of you for spending a half an hour with us today.

Mike: And for those of you listening, we're going to invite you to listen in next time when we talk about the additional challenges and opportunities of college life. We look forward to sharing the air with you then. Until then, please stay safe.