From Tuesday, Oct. 13, to Friday, Oct. 17, Saint University University hosted Sober Week.
Sober Week was a week long event that was hosted by Saint Xavier’s Counseling Center and Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Program (AODEP) in an attempt to demonstrate the amount of fun a student can have without turning to alcohol.
The week included a variety of events, and not all of them were related to alcohol.
On Tuesday, Oct. 14, there were mocktails being served in the diner, along with an opportunity for students to sign a Sober Pledge in which the student promises not to drink alcohol during the week into the weekend.
On Wednesday, Oct. 15, the movie Scary Movie was shown in the Butler Reception Room in the evening.
On Thursday, Oct. 16, students were given a chance to go through a voluntary alcohol screening in the diner, which would enter them in a raffle to win one of twenty-five $10 Dunkin Donuts gift cards.
On Friday, Oct. 17, there was a .08K Run held at the Bruce R. Deaton Memorial Field. If students received a red ribbon when they signed the Sober Pledge earlier, they could use it to gain another free food truck ticket, which were also present at the run.
A fatal vision goggles demonstration was also held after the run. Here, students could complete an obstacle course while wearing “beer googles,” which were meant to distort the student’s vision as they went through it to get a sense of what it felt like to travel drunk.
When asked of her opinion regarding Sober Week, Saint Xavier student Shannon Roche stated, “I think it was really important. I learned a lot that I didn’t know, even though I’m not a drinker myself. But I found it really interesting and worth coming out and participating.”
Likewise, fellow student Sam Gundling said, “I thought this week was pretty eye-opening because I learned about what happens when you’re drunk, and I learned that you don’t have to be drunk to have fun, you could have fun while you’re sober.”
According to Sarah Schulfer, counselor and coordinator of AODEP, Sober Week was a very interesting opportunity to see how willing the students were to participate in the events.
“It’s really cool to have them be like, ‘Yeah, I’ll sign a sober pledge, no problem. I don’t drink anyway.’ I think that’s eye-opening for everybody because there is a stereotype about college students that everybody is out partying and drinking and overwhelmingly we are finding that that is not the case,” Schulfer said.
Schulfer also said that the importance of Sober Week was to educate the participants and make them aware of alcohol consumption and the consenquences it could bring, along with trying to bring students away from believing that consuming alcohol is the only way to have fun in college.
“I think there’s a lot of people who really struggle with that idea, saying that in college you should be drinking, that’s what you should be doing. But by being sober you can still have just as much fun, if not more because you actually will remember it and you’ll be able to keep control of yourself during whatever event it is that you’re doing,” Schulfer said.
According to Schulfer, this is the first time Saint Xavier University has done something this big to educate students and raise awareness of drinking.
There are hopes of creating more events and programs similar to that of Sober Week in the future.
Gisselle Lopez
News Editor
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