The University soon will join as many as 300 institutions in the participation of offering interactive alcohol awareness Web sites to students who want to learn more about substance use and abuse.
AlcoholEdu.com and mystudentbody.com are two Web sites which approached the University’s Wellness Education Center at a recent Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention convention, said Amy Cavender, Wellness Education coordinator.
“We’ve decided on mystudentbody.com because their interactive Web site is more self-directed and graphically more appealing,” Cavender said.
She said another factor was the wide range of costs between the two sites. Mystudentbody, or MSB, will cost the center about $8,000 from its budget, while AlcoholEdu.com asks as much as $33,000 for its services.
“Mystudentbody.com offers different modules on different topics, more so than AlcoholEdu,” Cavender said. “It’s interesting how there’s such a large spread of costs, considering the flexibility of mystudentbody.”
She said students will be able to access the Web site free of charge by using a University code advertised through PAWS and the Wellness Education Web site.
Some colleges, such as Santa Clara University in California, require incoming freshmen to complete alcohol awareness courses, according to an article from the Daily Trojan at the University of Southern California.
“We’re not looking at this as a credit course at this time, but right now our main goal is for students to seek out health education at their own time without people looking at them,” Cavender said. “I think in a classroom setting, people might wonder why someone is asking about alcohol.”
Although the center already offers question and answer sites such as “Ask Mike” on its Web site, Cavender said the sites have not been publicized enough, and she expects increased student involvement with this new site as soon as the center can get the word out.
“We’re hoping for more support from student organizations and classes, such as kinesiology, to get the word out,” she said.
Sarah Lord, director of college health programs for MSB, said the Web site targets college students because her research team found that students are concerned about health issues, and the Internet was the best way to get the information out.
“We’re reading all the time the drinking rates among college students and all the accidents that are drinking related,” Lord said.
Mark Silver, a political science junior, said he does not think the site will stop students from drinking too much or going out.
“I drink, and I know what happens to me,” Silver said. “The only thing to keep me from going out is money and grades but nothing about my health.”
Sandy Lambert, an international trade and finance sophomore, said she thinks more female students would use the new site rather than males to learn about health, but it would not stop her from partying.
Cavender said the University’s decision to look into Web sites like this is because a campus this large needs to cater to different learning styles and the Wellness Center hopes to make students more aware of health effects from alcohol, as well as other lifestyle decisions.
“LSU is a major university – a small town within a large city – and some people prefer face-to-face interaction or privacy,” she said. “This is just another way to offer help and information.”