THE PLAIN DEALER SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1996 OSU president relishes university's leadership role Basic values should become focus of discussion, Gee says By FRAN HENRY PLAIN DEALER REPORTER Lamenting cultural deterioration' doesn't fit into E. Gordon Gee's schedule. It has been crowded out by plans to help stop it. Gee, president of Ohio State University, believes that solving cultural problems begins by talking about basic values and that universities should lead the national conversation on the "The university is sitioned to lead the discussion," he said. "If can't be done by families, communities and churches, someone has to speak up.
We should preach, teach and live the issues. "We'd be naive to assume that we could resolve this of just by approaching it at the college level, but we certainly shouldn't hide behind the fact that the work should have been in through 12," he said. Gee is undaunted by the prospect of bucking what he calls "the purveyors of our society," the mass media. "TV and newspapers are driven by the bottom line: they thrive on pestilence and controversy, and this has a demoralizing effect on the real issue that should be dealt with." Gee conceives of a dialogue quite unlike the Dan QuayleMurphy Brown brouhaha on illegitimacy, which gave birth to "family values" as an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign. "The issue of values needs to be discussed in the context of civility and respect, not as political issues to gouge people's eyes out," said Gee, who heads the country's largest single campus, with nearly 50,000 students.
"We need legitimate conversations about what's right and wrong." He is optimistic that good things will come from dialogue. Ohio colleges unite against 'Animal House' mentality JACK E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University: "I see the role of the university in society as a beacon stricted to any particular population, but is fairly widespread. Just as we have violent gangs in cities, we have 'Spur Posses' in the suburbs," Post said. Conversely, Dr.
John Gibbs, an Ohio State University psychology professor, believes positive social development is possible throughout the lifespan, "in principle, at least." The problem, as he sees it, is One of the leaders of this statewide college-based initiative to change student attitudes which coalition members and a Harvard public health researcher say is the first in the nation is Baldwin-Wallace College, where efforts have been under way for the last five years. "We are trying to change a norm, just as the norm for smoking has changed," said B-W Dean of Students Denise Reading. "That will take a long time, obviously." The campaign on the B-W campus has been directed from the student Wellness Resource Center, a campus agency that is a health center and a lot more. "We work on alcohol and drug prevention, on sexual health, sexual assault, and stress reduction. Those are the major health risks college students face," said Jan Gascoigne, the center's director.
The strategy includes student center entertainment with an anti-binge message and student speakers who visit dormitories, as well as punishment for offenders, who are fined and ordered to attend alcohol seminars and, in repeat cases, to get counseling. Gascoigne is one of several leaders who organized the statewide coalition with the help of several nonprofit agencies, including Ohio Parents for a Drug Free Youth. Heeding a warning Ohio State University President Gordon Gee is chairing the Community Exchange. He said alcohol-related incidents on his campus after the OSU-Notre Dame football game Sept. 28 got his full attention.
About 1,000 drunken! youths, including hundreds of students, rioted on a street near the campus, overturning four cars and starting fires. Police arrested seven people, including four students. Gee said he suspended three students. "Students talk about kegs and eggs This has become a cultural issue. It ought to be books and Kool-Aid," he said.
"But students won't listen to a 50-year-old president. We have Census Bureau finds dis disabilities in 2 million Ohio adults or role "If you approach this from a position of cynicism, you've lost the battle." Gee is enlisting interest in the national discussion on values among the 22 members of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Colleges. As chairman, Gee said the commission will. address values in its report. Commission members Frederick Hutchison, president of the University of Maine in Osno, and Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef of the University of California, Davis, support Gee's mission but with some reservation.
Hutchison said that, while commission members share Gee's interest in the complete development of the students, the challenge is "to build in the element of ethical thinking and behavior and a sense of values into our curriculum." But, he said, for values education to be successful, "we've got to work with through 12, also." Vanderhoef foresees difficulty achieving faculty consensus about values. "As you get into matters of faith and subjective matters, there simply isn't agreement on what values should be taught," he said. "Our common base of values has disappeared. We've lost sight of the high value of having basic values." Dr. Stephen Post, an ethicist at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine, agrees that families need help teaching a basic sense of right and wrong.
He stressed, however, that development of basic values must occur early in life and re usually in the family context, where parents inculcate values by example. "In the final analysis, people come to the higher level of education with a family background which either failed or succeeded in forming their character." "Our cultural crisis isn't rethe college scene, but how much they imbibe depends on the individual. "I can't handle four drinks in one sitting," said McGuan, of Lakewood. "I'd be way too sick. But I think drinking is acceptable, more acceptable than not.
If you're not a big drinker, you are more of a minority. By big, I mean more than five drinks one for men. A guy who drinks five beers would just be out for a light night. They really drink, like, 12 beers." Colleen Conway, 24, of Cleveland, graduated from Bowling Green State University two years ago and said beer parties were part of the campus culture. "They used to have huge parties where they would block off the streets and have open kegs everywhere," she said.
"You could walk down the street and get free beer. Now, they have stopped doing it." The campus culture Block parties at Bowling Green may have been eliminated, but the campus alcohol culture is still intact. It can be life threatening. A BG freshman from Fairview Park, for example, was rushed to a Toledo hospital last month in a coma after binge drinking in the house of a fraternity he was pledging. He later recovered and was back in classes, although he declined to comment about the incident.
BG Dean of Students Greg DeCrane said 32 students involved in that incident face disciplinary actions that will include mandatory alcohol education classes. The fraternity faces disciplinary action by the school and its national chapter. DeCrane agreed that the student culture of alcohol abuse should be changed. "We are finding here, as nationwide, there is an awful lot more binge drinking than in the past. We think our perspectives mandatory class for student offenders is important because it gets the message to someone where it is going to make a difference," he said.
About 20 to 30 are in the weekly classes. flight of stairs or having trouble lifting 10 pounds not just problems that leave people unable to work or take care of themselves. Counties in southern Ohio had the highest percentages in the study, which estimated that more than 33 percent of the noninstitutionalized residents 16 and older of Scioto, Jackson, Vinton, Adams, Pike, Lawrence and Meigs counties had some sort of disability. The figures were much lower when the report distinguished between any type of disabilities and "severe disabilities," meaning problems that prevent people I from performing a function at all or force them to use a wheelchair or some other mobility aid. It estimated that 12.89 percent of Ohioans were severely disabled, with the top counties, Scioto and Jackson, topping 22 percent.
Another measurement tried to distinguish between those with a problem and those unable to work. By that gauge, 4.78 percent of Ohio's noninstitutionalized population age 16 to 64 was estimated to be unable to work. The percentages increased accordingly in southern Ohio: 13.1 percent of working-age resi- KUSTRON ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER 01.Y rather than a tail of light." 1 with the values we promulgate. "We're celebrating individual values to such an extent that we're neglecting the need to cultivate the natural moral potential of the child," Gibbs said. His reference is William Damon, author of "Greater Expectations Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools" (Free Press Paperbacks, $12).
"Damon lays out the got to get students involved and get some reasonableness back into these discussions," said Gee. Gee said that along with reasonableness, he has instituted a crackdown on alcohol violations, adding that he supports the actions of Columbus police in making arrests for' alcohol-related violations. A few weeks after the OSU riot, Gee addressed representatives of schools that have joined the Community Exchange. "We must work together to bring the problem out into the open, change the campus culture and improve the quality of life for all of our students," he said. Patricia Harmon, executive director of Ohio Parents for a Drug Free Youth, said Gee is right to focus on changing the culture of campus life.
"From here on out, change must come from the campus culture. Everybody is part of the problem. Everybody needs to be part of the solution," she said. For example, she said professors who say, "I won't give you a test Friday because I know you get drunk the night before" are part of the problem. "And college bookstores that sell shot glasses with the school's athletic logo are part of that culture.
We have said for a long time that this is normal," she said. B-W Dean of Students Reading said such paraphernalia are no longer sold at the bookstore there. She said professors now routinely try to give exams the morning after weeknight beer parties. The college also created a nonalcoholic student activities center, called the SAC, where comedians and others perform, often delivering an anti-binge or healthy-living message. Frat goes alcohol-free Cassy Bailey, B-W director of student life, said the campus will soon get its first alcohol- and substance-free fraternity housing.
Alpha Tau Omega, decertified by its national parent fraternity five years ago for alcohol violations, will return in January with substance-free housing, she said. Joshua Cantwell, student vice dents were unable to do so in Scioto County, 12.8 percent in Jackson County, 11.1 percent in Adams County and 10.9 percent in Vinton County. All those figures are statistical estimates based on the 1990 census and subsequent surveys that asked more detailed questions. Different county statistics were obtained when the Ohio Rehabilitative Services Commission did a survey, using its own factors to decide whether to classify people as disabled. That state survey estimated that 18.1 percent of Jackson County's working-age population ways in which parents adults have been guilty of dereliction of duty," Gibbs said, "not providing youth the leadership and moral guidance they need." While disagreement on values is likely in a multicultural society, Post said, "We can probably agree across cultures on certain moral principles.
For example, whether one is engaged in engineering, business, law, health president of the new chapter at B- said the substance-free strategy came from the national headquarters. He said students don't mind it because it does not outlaw drinking, just drinking in the housing. Cantwell said he supports B- W's anti-binge-drinking programs because they are not preachy and do not call for total abstinence. "You can't force this on anyone. But if you attend, you can learn what could happen," said Cantwell, a junior marketing major and football player.
"I think the programs are excellent. I have seen a mock rape. trial for a rape that resulted from drinking. This was put on by the Wellness Center. The football coach did one on drinking and driving," he said.
Eric Christensen, national executive director of Alpha Tau Omega, said the fraternity adopted a policy of substancefree housing in all new chapters in 1993, when ATO returned to the University of Indiana three years after the charter of its local chapter was pulled for alcoholrelated infractions. "This addresses the fraternity's incredible legal liabilities concerning alcohol and safety. Fraternities are often mired in a number of lawsuits at any one time," he said. "There is also a bigger picture: The influence we have on young people. They went to college first to be a student and, secondly, to be a fraternity member," he said.
Bryan Breittholz, director of Greek Life at Miami University in Oxford, which has 50 Greek organizations, said the national fraternities are attempting to return to their 19th-century roots by shedding the alcohol culture. "Many of them started as literary societies," he said. Breittholz said the administration at Miami in consultation with students, faculty and police has been reviewing a proposal by the National Interfraternity Council called Select 2000 that works toward those kinds of changes. Though substance-free fraternity houses have not yet been adopted at Miami, other policy had some disability. Scioto County's estimate was next-highest, at 17.8 percent, followed by Wayne (17.4 percent) and Adams (16.1 percent).
For the state as a whole, that survey, called Project Compass, estimated 8.5 percent of workingage Ohioans had disabilities. At the Scioto County Human Services Department, Director Ruby Grant said the Census Bureau's estimates were surprisingly high. "That's staggering to me," Grant said. "I don't know how that could be substantiated." The most common reasons people sought compensation for disa- 10:11 care or teaching, the principle of 'do no harm' will stand." At this time, Gee's interest does not include additions to university curricula. "I'm asserting only that values need to be "Civility 101 would certainly be opposed.
Clearly there are discussions about ethics and values that can be infused into the curriculum by adding dimension, but not adding courses," Gee said." ALCOHOL FROM 1-B "College is a very special time people's lives," said William DeJong, director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention in Newton, Mass. Students "are beginning to enjoy some of the freedoms of adulthood, but without the responsibilities that. adulthood brings. That means there is a lot of unstructured time." Binge drinking "also happens in college because, over time, a permissiveness has DeJong said. "College officials in many places are afraid take a stand and say certain behaviors are unacceptable.
That has led people to believe that rules are irrelevant." Outgrowing binges An unscientific survey of some local students indicates that, at least for upperclassmen, binge drinking is something they have already outgrown, having lived through it as freshmen. Dennis Wilson, vice president for finance of the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity at Cleveland State University, holds down a job at the same time he is attending junior classes and said he doesn't have time to indulge in heavy drinking. He said chapter rules do not allow the fraternity to use dues money to buy alcohol. And when the fraternity holds parties at its E. house, some members serve as "security." They do not drink and evict anyone who gets out of hand.
When members go to bars to drink, they ride in a cab, he said, to avoid drunken-driving tickets. John Carroll University senior Mary Deucher said she and her friends had overindulged as freshmen, but no longer. "I think most of us grew up," she said. CSU student government president Rocco Di Pierro, a senior in pre-law, said anti-binge programs "are probably good because they make people think. Anything that promotes awareness will be helpful," he said.
Hope McGuan, 26, a graduate student at CSU, said students simply accept drinking as part of By KATHERINE RIZZO ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON Such everyday activities as walking, conversing and reading a newspaper are difficult or impossible for more than 2 million Ohio adults, almost 25 percent of the state's population, according to a Census Bureau study of people with disabilities. Nationally, the report estimated that 45 million people, or about a quarter of all Americans, have a disability. That includes all types of physical impairments such as having to rest while ascending a changes have been made in an effort to re-establish scholarship and citizenship as fraternity: focuses. Project Zero Tolerance Meanwhile, the Oxford Police Department, responding to growing complaints from residents, faculty and council members, this fall began Project Zero Tolerance to break the alcohol culture. "This is a renewed effort to enforce the laws that have been on the books for years," said Chief Steve Schwein, who patterned this community policing strategy after one used by New York City police.
The department fields a foot patrol whose members are quick to cite students for vandalism, noise, drinking in public, and related assaults and fights. Students who are cited end up in Municipal Court, and their records are sent to the university for additional punishment. Citations and arrests are up about 40 percent from last year, said the chief. Susan Vaughn, vice president of student affairs, said the university also has tightened its policies, giving students a maximum of three infractions of alcohol policies before they face suspensions, two infractions if their drunken behavior is disruptive. Students cited for underage drinking, considered nondisruptive, face a two-hour seminar about drinking and its consequences.
Second offenders get a four class and a trip to a counselor to help them make an assessment of whether they have an alcohol problem. Third "offenses require a one-semester suspension. ward Vaughn said citations several hundred a year have been dropping slowly since 1993 but are expected to jump this year because of the Oxford Police Department's campaign. She said three-quarters of the citations go to freshmen. "We were hoping to make a difference," Vaughn said of this year's crackdown.
"Alcohol is so prevalent. We no longer give warnings. People are not supposed to drink under 21 anyway." bilities there were heart problems, poor nerves, breathing disorders, back problems and pression, she said. Trudy Sharp, spokeswoman for the Ohio Rehabilitative Services Commission, also cautioned that defining the degree of disability can be a moving target. For instance, she said, one woman suffered seizures that left her with shaking arms.
814; With a little creativity, though, she became employable; someone attached a Velcro fastener to a glove, and some more to: a hair dryer, and now she's employed, Sharp said. "She dries dogs for a groomer:" 1:.
