Advice for dealing with drug use/ alcoholism in a dorm setting.

[Epsilon Alpha]

Hey,

I know this isn't my usual style of post, but I was hoping you guys could help me out.

First a little background: I live in one of the largest dorms in my country and am in a position of authority regarding punishment/catching illegal or excessive drug use. Now I know that people experiment and do one or two stupid things in university, and I generally am quite understanding (ex: flush it and don't do it again and this avoids your record etc...). But, I've been having a problem with recurrent drug use in the buildings/floors I'm responsible for.
I've recently had to arrange an eviction due to one guy repeatedly smoking weed in his room and low level dealing, which was the only option left at that point. I also have several individuals with extremely self destructive binge drinking habits who end up puking/pissing/crapping all over the place which needs to be cleaned at great expense to the residence and themselves.

Is there any sort of tips or tricks for getting through to this kind of person? I have fairly permissive though... "clinical" views of drinking/drug use myself, but still do a great job at catching it and addressing it as I said above. About 90% of people I catch are simply grateful that they avoid a blotch on their records and don't do anything I have to address again. But, its the 10% that do that I really need to address before they fail out or force me to evict them.

Thanks guys,
EA

 

[Ixchellian]

Just because lots of people like to treat college as an excuse to "experiment", doesn't give anyone a free pass to break the dorm rules.

If you pick & choose which rules to enforce, and apply the consequences for breaking them arbitrarily according to your personal beliefs.... nobody will take you seriously. And that's not a good way to supervise a bunch of college kids, and you'll continue to have problems.

The laws & rules covering drug use may not seem fair, but they still need to be enforced... especially in a dormitory setting. That's not to say you gotta be a tyrant, but don't cut people slack just because.

 

[Epsilon Alpha]

Upon rereading my post I can see why you think I would be going to easy. The sheer amount of paperwork needed to even process one call of the campus 5-0 or put it on someone's record is what causes me to have to resolve things off the books. I'm a real hard ass when it comes to forcing people to flush stashes or personally pay for any cleaning their actions require.

If I processed everyone who I caught with weed inside the buildings last month it would have been 86 pages of paperwork I need to file which would take roughly 30 minutes a page.

 

[RedLeader]

People puking/pissing/crapping is not just drinking. Why don't you focus on nailing them for these consequences of getting overly-intoxicated? I understand that writing everybody up for underage drinking or drinking in the dorms would be a problem in its own way, but if someone gets drunk enough to piss in the corner of the hallway, then write him up a la public urination. Things like that, so it's really just the side-effects of over-indulgence that select who really needs to get in trouble.

As for the people dealing weed, I'd politely just let him know that you cannot have this type of thing going on inside of the dorm. He's free to take it behind the chemistry building or whatever, but obviously he's not flying under the radar with it and therefore it could be disruptive to the lives of the more innocent students.

As for the paperwork, you signed up for the job, right?

 

[fridgebuzz]

I wasn't the model student in my residency hall freshman year smoking weed in my dorm, doing dxm a couple nights a week, stealing the lobby furniture for my room and staying up all night drinking and playing loud music with friends, but for fucks safe I wouldn't have ever pissed/shit inside, destroy the inside of our elevator or start an indoor fire; they still happened. Write them up if it crosses the line because nobody knew who vandalized the elevator and everyone had to pay for its repair. You need to send a signal that sort of behavior is unacceptable for everyone's sake. I'm not one for posterchilds and examples, but pooping inside? They need a stern wake up call.

 

[Epsilon Alpha]

If I catch some one shitting/pissing its an insta eviction, but if I don't catch them in the act all I can do is fine them heavily. Shit really doesn't seem to get through to these kids. Ended up finding a couch covered in piss and shit 2 weeks ago because some guy passed out on it, and all I could do was track him down and hit him with a $400 fine.

As far as the paper work goes, the guy who was implementing our new/current system of documenting reports quit half way through first semester so writing everything up just leads to them getting disciplinary action 4 months from now due to the backlog of paperwork. These are the kids who I can threaten with eviction to the face and they'll be back at it in two weeks, been evicting a large number of them since last semester to set a example but it doesn't seem to be working. These people got away with it last year when we had a serious staffing problem and have this idea in their head that they're just not in the real world despite the evictions of others.