Utilizing Web-based Programs to Combat High-Risk Drinking on College Campuses: A Reviews of Fail Safe and the Year One College Alcohol Profile 1 of 3
Tom Workman & Linda Major
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07/21/2017
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27
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Description
Addressing High-Risk Drinking Embedded in Group Membership: The Failsafe Student Leader Toolkit
College prevention specialists have known for decades that high-risk drinking is often clustered into social groups and communities that can become, as sociologist Steven Lyng describes, “edgework communities.” College campuses provide a perfect breeding ground for these communities with fraternities and sororities, sports clubs, recognized student organizations, and even group-oriented co-curricular activities like marching or pep bands or student newspapers. Understanding how high-risk communities operate socially helps us focus prevention and intervention efforts to incorporate group dynamics such as group culture, expectation setting, peer enforcement, and peer intervention. The Failsafe Student Leader Toolkit was created to adapt evidence-based strategies for use with these groups. An online collection of videos, scripts, templates, and instructions, the toolkit enables student leaders to work autonomously with their membership, utilizing the power of leader influence while delivering tried and true individual and environmental strategies. Tom Workman, creator of the toolkit, will discuss the theory used to develop the toolkit, demonstrate the toolkit, and train NCC members on how to use the toolkit on campus.
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- [00:00:04.664]It is particularly an honor for me to be here
- [00:00:07.500]for a couple reasons, and I really want to express them
- [00:00:09.990]before I kinda get started here.
- [00:00:12.840]Everything that I have been doing in the last 10 years
- [00:00:17.410]since leaving Nebraska has come from my work in Nebraska.
- [00:00:22.540]It's come from the
- [00:00:24.790]brilliant mentorship I received
- [00:00:26.330]from so many of you and in particular, Linda Major
- [00:00:29.510]who has taught me more than I can ever tell you,
- [00:00:32.130]and is still my favorite think buddy
- [00:00:34.560]in the whole wide world.
- [00:00:36.140]And so much of what I've seen,
- [00:00:40.340]now that I've kind of been around the country
- [00:00:43.480]and telling the Nebraska, so I still tell
- [00:00:44.760]the Nebraska story everywhere I go
- [00:00:46.440]and all around the country.
- [00:00:47.890]I can tell you what Ian just told you about
- [00:00:50.290]the state of Nebraska is unbelievably true.
- [00:00:54.296]There aren't many other states, in fact
- [00:00:57.330]we're at a time in decline, a time where I have
- [00:00:59.730]never seen such national decline in college
- [00:01:03.300]alcohol prevention.
- [00:01:04.430]I'm gonna tell you in alcohol prevention period.
- [00:01:07.900]Treatment is the big word in Washington, D.C.
- [00:01:10.440]and right now opiod addiction is the big concern
- [00:01:14.320]right now in Washingtonton, D.C. having just spent
- [00:01:16.340]the last five years there,
- [00:01:18.270]I can tell you that is taking all the time
- [00:01:21.090]and all the energy and all the attention
- [00:01:22.930]and all the funding, all the funding.
- [00:01:25.680]All of that funding is being used for opiod (laughs)
- [00:01:29.650]addiction, let's see how well that goes.
- [00:01:32.870]So this kind of work, this kind of forward thinking,
- [00:01:36.440]this moving past this concept that this is simply
- [00:01:40.700]an entrenched problem that will not go away.
- [00:01:44.270]I'm gonna show you a couple of articles today
- [00:01:46.750]that rise my ire, that make me fight even harder
- [00:01:50.650]and want to do even more in this field
- [00:01:53.340]because the majority of the country believes
- [00:01:56.180]there's not a darn thing you can do about it.
- [00:01:59.460]In fact, particularly when we talk about
- [00:02:01.270]dealing with Greek students, our highest risk
- [00:02:03.110]group on campus, so we think it's the only group
- [00:02:07.490]that we measure outside of athletes, who knows right?
- [00:02:10.190]I think if we did the same measurements we did
- [00:02:12.120]for the band we might just as much of an issue
- [00:02:15.850]but we just don't measure them.
- [00:02:18.170]So for the Greeks we know particularly, people think
- [00:02:21.470]that's just the way it is
- [00:02:24.330]and I have to tell you here it is truly different.
- [00:02:27.350]I really, really have to tell you
- [00:02:29.587]how fortunate you are to be in Nebraska
- [00:02:32.460]because this is a place of innovation.
- [00:02:35.420]This is not simply a place of saying let's try harder.
- [00:02:39.170]Some of the things that you're employing
- [00:02:41.860]and really my trying to reach out to the edge
- [00:02:45.060]here in terms of college prevention comes from
- [00:02:47.928]the spirit that is in this state.
- [00:02:49.640]Don't just sit and say there's nothing we can do,
- [00:02:52.330]more importantly think past it, go beyond it.
- [00:02:55.670]In innovation, there's no place like Nebraska.
- [00:02:59.750]In innovation, in prevention.
- [00:03:02.886]So I'm thrilled, oops don't do that,
- [00:03:05.020]I'm thrilled and I'm honored to be able to be
- [00:03:07.560]a part of that and to bring back to you, mother state,
- [00:03:11.870]some of my own creative thinking around that
- [00:03:13.980]influenced so much from the work that I started here
- [00:03:17.890]and hopefully a way to keep us moving forward.
- [00:03:20.830]So what I'm gonna do today
- [00:03:25.939]is be pretty casual, is that okay, you good with that?
- [00:03:29.130]I didn't wear a tie, I didn't wear a jacket,
- [00:03:33.170]I wore pants, that's just important,
- [00:03:36.370]you're welcome, you're welcome.
- [00:03:38.397](audience laughs)
- [00:03:39.821]What I wanna do today is I wanna spend some time,
- [00:03:41.610]they gave me time and I'm really delighted for that.
- [00:03:44.020]I've done this presentation in 45 minutes
- [00:03:46.500]and it sucks (laughs) so I'm really glad
- [00:03:48.090]to have some time
- [00:03:49.540]because to really understand this, and again
- [00:03:51.900]especially here where you appreciate what's behind it,
- [00:03:55.370]there's a very important theory that I've been working on
- [00:03:58.020]for around 10 years, I've done a lot of research on it.
- [00:04:00.700]I just got an article published with the original author,
- [00:04:03.900]a chapter in the Sage Handbook for Risk Communication
- [00:04:07.370]which features Nebraska really prominently in that chapter
- [00:04:10.790]and so this concept of Edgework I'm gonna try
- [00:04:13.770]to explain to you cause it's the basis of our understanding.
- [00:04:17.180]It's a very different understanding though
- [00:04:19.050]so I wanna warn you.
- [00:04:20.870]I wanna tell you this isn't going to feel
- [00:04:22.701]like what you're used to hearing.
- [00:04:25.350]We're used to talking about right of passage,
- [00:04:28.310]we're used to talking about peer pressure
- [00:04:30.050]a lot, a lot, a lot.
- [00:04:32.900]Edgework theory's gonna blow some of that
- [00:04:34.740]out of the water because it's gonna suggest
- [00:04:36.730]that something else very different is happening socially.
- [00:04:40.460]It's a sociological theory.
- [00:04:42.350]So I'm gonna try my best to explain to you
- [00:04:44.160]and I think you're going to see like I did the connection.
- [00:04:47.840]I think you're going to see, oh gosh that makes sense
- [00:04:50.440]for some of our college groups.
- [00:04:52.720]So that's hopefully going to happen for you
- [00:04:54.781]because if it doesn't
- [00:04:55.980]everything else I'm gonna talk about is gonna be that
- [00:04:57.850]so you may just say at lunch, thanks that was good,
- [00:05:01.120]thanks bye, bye, don't come back.
- [00:05:03.850]So I'm gonna then talk about this around
- [00:05:05.920]college alcohol prevention, I wanna introduce
- [00:05:08.070]the Failsafe Toolkit to you.
- [00:05:10.540]It's all online and I'll show it to you
- [00:05:12.570]and then I wanna talk about really the two concepts
- [00:05:16.430]here that the Failsafe Toolkit tries to get to
- [00:05:18.579]and that's peer leadership and peer enforcement.
- [00:05:23.680]These are words that
- [00:05:25.196]again we kind of start to pull back from
- [00:05:29.670]from the beginning, peer enforcement,
- [00:05:33.993]and particularly in places, and let me tell you
- [00:05:36.690]not just here, in Nebraska nice,
- [00:05:40.070]but all over the country the greatest concern
- [00:05:42.330]I heard from administrators is
- [00:05:44.240]oh don't make friends, enforce friends.
- [00:05:47.330]And I'm going to show you friends enforce friends
- [00:05:50.420]every single day.
- [00:05:52.720]Friends enforcing friends is what creates your community
- [00:05:56.019]and if you don't believe me go out in your neighborhood
- [00:05:59.210]tonight naked and see how that works for you.
- [00:06:04.390]Friends enforce friends constantly.
- [00:06:07.450]But let's get there, we'll get there on top of that.
- [00:06:09.350]So that's the plan, the only thing
- [00:06:10.970]I'm gonna say other than that is,
- [00:06:15.155]there's no script, I have a couple of slides,
- [00:06:17.490]you know see if the medication lasts the whole time
- [00:06:19.680]we never know.
- [00:06:21.176](audience laughs)
- [00:06:22.492]So please don't hesitate to raise a hand
- [00:06:24.890]to stop in the middle of it to make question.
- [00:06:27.210]I would love for this to be as
- [00:06:28.400]discussion oriented as we can.
- [00:06:30.660]I'm particularly happy if you're having
- [00:06:32.860]a hard time swallowing anything.
- [00:06:35.110]I'm particularly happy if you're going
- [00:06:36.595](stutters) I don't really know.
- [00:06:38.500]Right, because that's how we all learn.
- [00:06:41.500]It's not just simply nodding your head
- [00:06:43.820]and going oh lovely, I don't buy any of it.
- [00:06:46.320]But let's have that conversation
- [00:06:47.720]because how we'll really be able to apply
- [00:06:49.350]what we're talking about today, okay?
- [00:06:51.910]Fair enough, here we go.
- [00:06:53.570]So I'm gonna start by telling you
- [00:06:56.010]that one of the ways in which sociologists
- [00:06:58.790]think about us as communities is that we do still gather
- [00:07:03.210]despite all the best of our diversity work,
- [00:07:05.852]we always sort of cluster around similarity.
- [00:07:10.930]It seems to be a very common social process,
- [00:07:13.560]it is not necessarily we think, bigoted or biased
- [00:07:17.840]or prejudiced because there's some form
- [00:07:19.870]of inherent bias in all of us.
- [00:07:22.630]And really, when the social psychologists get involved
- [00:07:26.010]what they think happens is
- [00:07:28.440]an anxiety we have around difference.
- [00:07:32.310]Cause I don't know the rules, I don't know
- [00:07:34.130]how to behave, I don't know how to act.
- [00:07:36.301]If you're not like me, I don't know what to do with you,
- [00:07:38.940]I don't know if anything works.
- [00:07:41.360]Are these jokes any good, is this clothing any good,
- [00:07:43.850]am I eating right?
- [00:07:44.683]I just don't know, and so if it's close to me
- [00:07:47.640]I'm gonna cluster to it because it's familiar for me.
- [00:07:51.070]In fact, it could be reinforcing to my identity.
- [00:07:55.990]It helps me, especially if I am unclear about
- [00:07:58.330]who I am or what I am, it helps me to sort of complete that.
- [00:08:02.230]So not surprising that most of our student organizations
- [00:08:05.674]have very similar themes yes?
- [00:08:09.570]The members looks alike, so go through the yearbook
- [00:08:11.830]then look at all the pictures and the chess club people
- [00:08:14.070]all look like chess club people,
- [00:08:16.610]right nobody with a mohawk in that picture.
- [00:08:18.781](audience laughs)
- [00:08:19.810]right piercings,
- [00:08:21.916]I do rock just
- [00:08:24.236]doesn't happen.
- [00:08:27.290]You can even tell Greek chapters by their chapters
- [00:08:30.690]and what's freaky, having been at a bunch of campuses
- [00:08:34.301]round the country is I can tell certain chapters
- [00:08:37.437]no matter where I am.
- [00:08:39.490]It's so weird I can meet someone, I can talk
- [00:08:41.540]to them for about 10 minutes and go, Chi Omega?
- [00:08:44.541](audience laughs)
- [00:08:46.280]Yeah, it's weird.
- [00:08:48.480]There are just personalities of certain chapters
- [00:08:52.770]and certain people who join certain chapters
- [00:08:54.640]and what clicks in their head at a leadership recruitment
- [00:08:58.234]or member recruitment.
- [00:09:00.380]So it just clicks in someone's head that says
- [00:09:02.410]that's like me,
- [00:09:04.860]that's why I'm gonna join, that feels like me.
- [00:09:07.360]Or, and far more importantly and I can't say this
- [00:09:10.410]enough to you, that feels like the me I want to be.
- [00:09:15.539]That feels like the me I want to identify as.
- [00:09:20.450]And so that's my group.
- [00:09:21.710]This is the organization of people who get me.
- [00:09:25.980]That's who my group is,
- [00:09:27.820]and many of us have multiple identities
- [00:09:31.480]across multiple groups, right?
- [00:09:34.610]So I belong to a variety of different communities
- [00:09:37.299]in my community that have nothing
- [00:09:40.010]to do with one another (laughs).
- [00:09:42.077]So I'm a physics guy, I'm into metaphysics and crystals
- [00:09:46.850]and all of that stuff and living in North Carolina,
- [00:09:49.901]which actually has a whole community of people,
- [00:09:53.510]you know Raleigh, Durham, very progressive,
- [00:09:55.560]there's a wonderful whole community
- [00:09:57.480]but very different than my community of researchers.
- [00:10:01.590]Crystals don't come out in my community
- [00:10:03.770]of especially medical researchers, medical policy people.
- [00:10:07.900]Very different community, and because of that I have
- [00:10:10.550]a very different identity in both, don't you?
- [00:10:13.596]One group knows the me as getting one part of me
- [00:10:18.330]and another groups knows a me that has
- [00:10:20.320]a different part of me
- [00:10:21.790]and isn't it interesting that the last 10 years
- [00:10:25.540]of anthropological work done on college campuses
- [00:10:28.700]keeps telling us the student the faculty member
- [00:10:31.860]sees in class is not the student that other
- [00:10:35.010]students see outside of the classroom.
- [00:10:38.670]What is that, are these students just duplicitous,
- [00:10:41.830]do they just have personality disorder?
- [00:10:45.410]No, because we all do that to some degree.
- [00:10:48.750]Now we tend to latch towards a group that's closest
- [00:10:52.010]to our goal identity, that really sort of surrounds
- [00:10:54.870]who I think I want to be but I have to tell you
- [00:10:57.850]that that is, from sociological standpoint,
- [00:11:01.800]has much to do with what I think it's going to get me,
- [00:11:04.750]quite honestly.
- [00:11:06.840]So that identity, that group, may be because
- [00:11:10.030]I really want these people to get me
- [00:11:11.770]because I think these people are the very most
- [00:11:13.660]successful people ever.
- [00:11:16.820]And so I want that.
- [00:11:18.370]Now when we talk about peer pressure
- [00:11:22.930]we tend to think about peer pressure
- [00:11:24.500]from this kind of a standpoint.
- [00:11:25.960]We kind of think that what happens is
- [00:11:29.330]we as the new member of a culture or as a member
- [00:11:32.370]of the culture take a look at what's happening around us
- [00:11:35.507]and all the people who we admire or like
- [00:11:37.760]or think are cool or whatever,
- [00:11:39.990]or like us or who we want to be,
- [00:11:42.200]are doing something then we get the idea,
- [00:11:44.540]oh I should be doing that.
- [00:11:46.540]And to a degree that's all true of course,
- [00:11:48.320]of course, of course right?
- [00:11:49.810]A lot of what you do is based on what you've observed
- [00:11:52.370]everyone else to do and the people that matter to you.
- [00:11:55.261]You never imitate the slob in the middle of Dunkin Donuts
- [00:11:58.540]because you know not to imitate that person
- [00:12:01.610]but you imitate others.
- [00:12:03.320]However, I think one of the things
- [00:12:05.210]that we sort of misunderstood in college alcohol prevention
- [00:12:08.010]is this concept of peer pressure.
- [00:12:11.030]From a sociological position, and again thinking
- [00:12:14.440]about communities that we develop,
- [00:12:17.139]this isn't necessarily just an activity saying
- [00:12:21.181]you're doing something cool, I wanna be like you,
- [00:12:23.557]that's how we think advertising works,
- [00:12:25.960]I want to be like you therefore I will do
- [00:12:27.580]the same thing you're doing.
- [00:12:29.620]Not necessarily.
- [00:12:31.437]I think this is how I get into the group.
- [00:12:35.440]I think this is the admissions ticket.
- [00:12:38.410]So if I see everybody reading very studious,
- [00:12:41.650]very involved in their academics and this is the kind
- [00:12:45.450]of group identity I wish to have
- [00:12:47.750]then I'm going to adopt this identity.
- [00:12:50.540]Now again, remember what I just said to you earlier,
- [00:12:52.870]I already have part of this identity,
- [00:12:55.020]I already like books because if I'm someone
- [00:12:57.540]who's never read a book I don't even know
- [00:12:59.530]this community exists, I don't even see them,
- [00:13:02.073]they don't even exist in my mind.
- [00:13:05.010]I could walk right past them everyday
- [00:13:06.410]and not know they exist
- [00:13:08.430]because I'm just not geared toward looking at that
- [00:13:11.350]but if I have any inkling then I'm going to see that
- [00:13:14.770]and it's not that I'm going to imitate them,
- [00:13:16.900]oh I am going to, but I'm going to do so
- [00:13:19.470]because I believe if I'm holding a book
- [00:13:22.280]I get into your group.
- [00:13:24.890]This means if I get a D on a test
- [00:13:27.180]I worry about my peers still accepting me.
- [00:13:30.979]This means if I struggle in a class
- [00:13:33.581]and don't seem to get it then I don't know
- [00:13:36.200]if I wanna share it with this group
- [00:13:38.830]because they all get it and I think getting it
- [00:13:41.370]might be a part of what keeps me in the community.
- [00:13:45.430]This concept of membership is a concept
- [00:13:48.600]I wanna get to because it's key and fundamental
- [00:13:51.690]to our thinking about Edgework.
- [00:13:54.660]How do I belong to a group
- [00:13:57.050]and why is belonging so important to me?
- [00:14:00.380]Belonging is important, sociologists believe,
- [00:14:02.890]because ultimately what happens for me
- [00:14:05.290]is part of my identity is based in the group
- [00:14:07.730]that I belong to.
- [00:14:09.615]Wonder if that's true?
- [00:14:11.450]Ask yourself how many shirts you see
- [00:14:13.540]with an organization name on it.
- [00:14:16.470]Right, particularly in the Greek community
- [00:14:18.240]where you wear your letters, you wear your letters,
- [00:14:20.530]this is me.
- [00:14:22.476]Look at all the big red Ns in the room.
- [00:14:26.870]Or everywhere else (laughs).
- [00:14:29.680]This is me, this is who I am, this is what I am.
- [00:14:31.660]I am N.
- [00:14:34.877]And both of those things become mutually reinforcing right?
- [00:14:37.780]Obviously I shape what N is but far more importantly
- [00:14:40.970]it shapes what I am
- [00:14:43.090]and so I get a sense of feeling this is a good thing
- [00:14:46.020]if I find good elements of this
- [00:14:48.120]even if those elements are horrific by the way,
- [00:14:50.650]and I wanna make that point as well
- [00:14:52.630]because identity is blind (laughs).
- [00:14:55.270]Really in many ways identity is blind.
- [00:14:57.700]We become a member of something that,
- [00:15:00.990]I won't make references to Washington, D.C.,
- [00:15:03.923]we become members of something that perhaps
- [00:15:07.360]other groups find despicable, but we find positive,
- [00:15:11.970]we find really, really wonderful.
- [00:15:13.450]So we only see those because they're reinforcing for us.
- [00:15:16.100]So again, this group of students may be
- [00:15:18.659]not the most popular on campus
- [00:15:21.258]but they're the most popular in terms of
- [00:15:24.440]the kind of identity, I'm a reader,
- [00:15:27.277]yeah I'm a reader, I'm a reader.
- [00:15:30.230]It's the most popular for me and it's where
- [00:15:32.790]I start to form an identity for myself.
- [00:15:34.840]Membership connects to a very important identity.
- [00:15:39.220]Notice the crisis that happens around recruitment
- [00:15:43.800]by the way, or on bid day when someone doesn't make
- [00:15:47.277]or doesn't get the invitation to join
- [00:15:51.300]and what happens in that situation
- [00:15:53.460]is a real crisis of confidence, a real crisis of identity.
- [00:15:57.890]What's wrong with me that I can't be that?
- [00:16:02.550]If I'm not that, what am I
- [00:16:05.299]and where do I fit?
- [00:16:06.940]Remember in high school we had the jocks
- [00:16:09.530]and we had the geeks and we had the band guys
- [00:16:12.030]and we had the theater guys and we had
- [00:16:13.756]the theater fags, we had all these different people
- [00:16:16.950]and we all had to fit into one of these groups
- [00:16:20.340]and we kept kinda defining ourselves
- [00:16:21.850]or not defining ourselves by that group.
- [00:16:25.320]And so when we think about that community
- [00:16:28.637]around alcohol we have to think that the same thing exists.
- [00:16:33.756]We have to ask ourselves are communities themselves
- [00:16:37.533]identified by alcohol use?
- [00:16:41.470]And it seems silly but not, right?
- [00:16:45.610]Because a community can be identified around
- [00:16:47.999]almost anything, almost anything becomes the basis
- [00:16:52.520]of that community, I'm gonna argue that something
- [00:16:54.410]very specific about alcohol makes a specific kind
- [00:16:58.170]of community in a moment
- [00:17:00.110]but anything forms community and so certainly
- [00:17:03.180]we can form community around a common practice
- [00:17:06.670]or a behavior.
- [00:17:08.200]In this case, the behavior I'm going to identify
- [00:17:12.380]is high risk behavior.
- [00:17:15.100]Not even alcohol use, let me be very clear about this,
- [00:17:18.140]in fact one of the interesting findings epidemiologically
- [00:17:20.680]about college drinkers, heavy binge college drinkers
- [00:17:24.083]is that they're not just drinkers,
- [00:17:25.820]they're pot smokers, they're drug takers,
- [00:17:28.637]they're risk takers, they're risk takers
- [00:17:32.860]and a very specific kind of risk taker
- [00:17:36.290]that is looking for a community that will support
- [00:17:39.030]their risk taking.
- [00:17:40.750]That's the basis of Edgework theory.
- [00:17:43.970]Stephen Lyng created this concept quite a few years
- [00:17:46.960]ago actually, great guy teaches up in Wisconsin,
- [00:17:51.490]written a lot about this
- [00:17:54.061]and to his mind there is community formed
- [00:17:57.060]around the concept of Edgework which he calls
- [00:17:59.890]voluntary risk taking.
- [00:18:01.070]Now where the title comes from,
- [00:18:02.930]if you're a Hunter S. Thompson fan
- [00:18:05.379]then you know this comes from him.
- [00:18:08.080]He created this concept of Edgework
- [00:18:11.680]and what he meant, literally, and why Stephen used it,
- [00:18:15.260]is because the concept is I get as close
- [00:18:18.070]to the edge as possible but I don't fall off,
- [00:18:21.860]I come back.
- [00:18:23.690]And I keep testing the edge a little bit further
- [00:18:26.060]and a little bit further and little bit further
- [00:18:28.477]until it's death defying.
- [00:18:31.037]We love that term when we go to Cirque de Soleil,
- [00:18:34.810]death defying.
- [00:18:36.020]How did you do that and not fall off the cliff?
- [00:18:41.320]And we'll get to what that means in just a minute
- [00:18:43.676]cause it's a very important part of
- [00:18:44.957]what we're gonna talk about.
- [00:18:46.659]Stephen believes that there are three forms
- [00:18:49.400]of Edgework communities in our society
- [00:18:52.310]and particularly in American society.
- [00:18:54.450]He's an American researcher.
- [00:18:57.400]There is, first and foremost, occupational Edgework
- [00:19:00.060]communities, in other words there are high risk
- [00:19:02.060]professions that call on a certain type of person
- [00:19:06.317]who wants to engage in risk taking behavior
- [00:19:10.419]and they find a job in it.
- [00:19:13.000]Firefighters fit this, police officers fit this,
- [00:19:17.459]they've done quite a bit of research
- [00:19:19.510]around test pilots who fit this.
- [00:19:23.060]Can you imagine, plane's not working,
- [00:19:26.350]I'm here to not report it (laughs).
- [00:19:29.481]I mean can you just imagine?
- [00:19:31.836]So there are lots of occupations we have
- [00:19:32.669]where people take, for me, it's people who do
- [00:19:35.310]construction work on tall buildings.
- [00:19:36.890]When you see people up on the girder,
- [00:19:38.995]I feel dizzy watching that.
- [00:19:42.733]High risk professions where people thrive.
- [00:19:46.330]In fact what we learned about stress management
- [00:19:48.050]is things aren't stressful, people determine
- [00:19:50.490]what's stressful by what they like and what
- [00:19:52.090]they don't like and so really fascinating
- [00:19:54.735]that for someone this is thrilling,
- [00:19:57.820]this is really thrilling.
- [00:19:58.940]Now there are caveats to that that I'm going to make
- [00:20:01.080]because they're critical to this work.
- [00:20:03.210]The second group that they looked at
- [00:20:04.520]were recreational communities.
- [00:20:07.440]He spends a whole lot of time talking about
- [00:20:09.110]the things we love to do for fun,
- [00:20:11.470]if it's not part of our job,
- [00:20:13.460]in fact if I'm an accountant safe at my desk all day
- [00:20:16.616]I might be engaged in one of these.
- [00:20:19.950]Parasailing, cliff diving,
- [00:20:24.237]swimming with the sharks, you name it.
- [00:20:26.920]Lots of lots of our recreational activities
- [00:20:29.150]are very high risk
- [00:20:31.240]and they're calculated risks particularly.
- [00:20:35.260]Nobody's dumb enough to say, I'm gonna go
- [00:20:39.155]jump out of an airplane with a parachute.
- [00:20:42.380]Do you know how to do that, I have no idea
- [00:20:44.717]but I see people do it everyday and so how hard can it be?
- [00:20:51.170]Nobody does that.
- [00:20:52.350]The risks involved in occupational and recreational
- [00:20:55.473]Edgework are always, hear this very carefully, skilled.
- [00:21:01.560]They're always skilled, in fact they're trained.
- [00:21:04.910]The community itself supports a set of training
- [00:21:08.717]that enables you to take on the risk and succeed.
- [00:21:12.860]The training's critical, nobody is a test pilot
- [00:21:15.471]the first time out, right?
- [00:21:19.010]Because it would be the last time out.
- [00:21:21.190]No one is a firefighter without just, you know,
- [00:21:23.550]ages of training.
- [00:21:24.730]These are very, very complicated training programs
- [00:21:28.750]that people go through to know how to navigate risk.
- [00:21:33.110]To know how to get to the edge and always get back.
- [00:21:37.960]So Stephen and many of his colleagues,
- [00:21:40.970]including myself, starting asking the question,
- [00:21:43.190]what about elicit behavior?
- [00:21:46.090]Is it the same?
- [00:21:48.056]Anarchist groups, drug clans,
- [00:21:52.770]there are hundreds of different other kinds
- [00:21:56.280]of elicit risk taking that exist out there.
- [00:22:00.530]A, do they form community
- [00:22:03.810]and B do they follow in the same way?
- [00:22:06.700]Do they engage in a risk taking in some way
- [00:22:09.380]and is there some skill building?
- [00:22:10.910]And the answer was yes and no.
- [00:22:13.480]Interestingly enough, we discovered that there is,
- [00:22:17.075]Stephen discovered I didn't have anything to do with it,
- [00:22:20.650]there's elicit Edgework communities that exist
- [00:22:23.230]in exact same ways, following the exact same functions
- [00:22:26.536]of occupational and recreational Edgework communities.
- [00:22:30.237]Exact same.
- [00:22:32.960]Elicit isn't their word.
- [00:22:36.720]Occupational and recreational may be
- [00:22:38.260]a word in the communities, but elicit is not their word.
- [00:22:41.480]To them, they would call themselves
- [00:22:43.450]recreational Edgework communities.
- [00:22:46.150]It's one of the differences.
- [00:22:48.099]The other difference is that in some high risk groups
- [00:22:52.450]there is very, very clear training and skill building
- [00:22:57.250]and in others there isn't
- [00:22:59.530]and it usually determines the length of age
- [00:23:02.710]for the Edgework community.
- [00:23:06.070]It determines how well the Edgework community
- [00:23:07.930]is able to thrive.
- [00:23:10.100]So imagine a group of untrained parajumpers
- [00:23:14.410]or cliff divers, gosh our groups is getting
- [00:23:17.170]smaller and smaller everyday (laughs).
- [00:23:20.136]We just meet at funerals now I don't get it,
- [00:23:23.610]what's going on?
- [00:23:25.420]When there's not enough skill,
- [00:23:27.140]skill building becomes a critical part
- [00:23:29.060]and what's been fascinating,
- [00:23:30.810]there's a wonderful book I recommend if this is
- [00:23:32.680]interesting to you, you've got nothing else to do
- [00:23:35.270]on a rainy day, Stephen Lyng has a book
- [00:23:38.010]that's now probably 15 years old, maybe 10 years old,
- [00:23:41.810]where he has different researchers studying
- [00:23:44.140]different types of communities.
- [00:23:46.510]Stephen's interest is in motorcycling,
- [00:23:48.660]that's how he got into the Hunter Thompson name,
- [00:23:51.400]but people write about all kinds of things.
- [00:23:52.950]There's a wonderful article that's part
- [00:23:54.600]of my dissertation that talks about
- [00:23:57.619]drug groups, because there's a great similarity there
- [00:24:02.215]and that's really where this
- [00:24:03.350]kinda got connected for me.
- [00:24:05.640]Because for me, the question was really
- [00:24:09.170]could I apply this, is there something resonating
- [00:24:12.040]here that we could be using on a college campus?
- [00:24:15.750]And some of you I think are already dawning with me,
- [00:24:18.240]are you there?
- [00:24:20.290]And if you're not I'm gonna just drive it
- [00:24:21.750]into the ground till you can't stand it anymore
- [00:24:23.955]because I got three hours, no I'm kidding.
- [00:24:27.260]So this idea that high risk behavior
- [00:24:31.260]can be the basis of the community,
- [00:24:32.670]remember everything I just told you about identity
- [00:24:35.155]and about membership.
- [00:24:37.500]So what does it mean in occupational community?
- [00:24:40.370]These are a group of firefighters,
- [00:24:41.640]obviously they're doing a car wash, I hope
- [00:24:44.270]and what is it that makes these brothers,
- [00:24:48.520]unfortunately in this picture, so united?
- [00:24:53.310]And what is it is that, they'll tell you,
- [00:24:54.755]just like a good soldier will tell you,
- [00:24:57.270]everyone's got my back because they're trained
- [00:24:59.900]to get my back, cause they know that I'm going
- [00:25:02.300]to take a very specific calculated risk,
- [00:25:04.440]we've been through it a million times,
- [00:25:06.530]we know how to do it but my risk taking involves you
- [00:25:09.277]and if you don't do your part I'm hung out to dry.
- [00:25:15.500]I have a tremendous responsibility and if I'm not
- [00:25:18.456]skilled in taking my risk I endanger you.
- [00:25:23.580]So the community safety, the community's thriving
- [00:25:28.030]is based upon the skill of each and every Edgeworker,
- [00:25:31.300]does this make sense?
- [00:25:33.680]How good is unit number 56?
- [00:25:37.320]As good as each one of the members
- [00:25:40.120]who are able to do whatever they have to do
- [00:25:42.370]to rescue someone or put out the fire
- [00:25:44.850]or keep the fire from spreading
- [00:25:47.190]individually and then collectively.
- [00:25:49.630]And so does unit 56 feel great pride in their identity
- [00:25:54.440]as unit 56, sure, wouldn't you?
- [00:25:58.830]Sure.
- [00:26:00.500]This kind of community obviously exists
- [00:26:02.470]in recreational and we see this an awful lot in clubs,
- [00:26:05.250]adult clubs as well as obviously
- [00:26:07.940]college and even high school clubs
- [00:26:09.859]that there's more than just an activity these people share
- [00:26:14.600]is my point, there's an actual family.
- [00:26:16.620]We hear a lot about hang glider families,
- [00:26:19.590]we hear a lot about skateboarding families
- [00:26:21.900]and clans and this sort of thing in recreational Edgework,
- [00:26:26.960]it's very common for us.
- [00:26:28.130]So there's a bond that forms but I wanna tell you
- [00:26:31.250]the bond is the same, I just described, for occupational.
- [00:26:35.930]So in other words that bond has everything
- [00:26:37.550]to do with you had best be the one,
- [00:26:40.550]cause I don't know if you know anything about
- [00:26:42.250]parachuting, I really will never do this ever,
- [00:26:45.720]just in case you were wondering,
- [00:26:48.360]someone else has to check your pack.
- [00:26:50.810]You can't go, and even if you've done this a million times,
- [00:26:55.010]you know exactly how to do it,
- [00:26:56.620]if someone who doesn't know hasn't checked your pack
- [00:26:59.630]every one of these people would say to you,
- [00:27:01.390]stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid jumper,
- [00:27:05.016]bye nice knowing ya.
- [00:27:07.896]Because that reliance on someone else is critical.
- [00:27:11.990]In the same time who wants to be a member
- [00:27:14.400]of a parachute group that was in the news
- [00:27:16.250]for someone dying yesterday?
- [00:27:19.120]Right join our club, only four people have died.
- [00:27:24.970]Check around that's a good statistic.
- [00:27:29.216]Notice this mutual benefit, this is the point
- [00:27:33.170]I'm trying to make to you.
- [00:27:34.990]There's a really critical,
- [00:27:36.100]in an Edgework community there's a really critical
- [00:27:39.520]mutual benefit from the behavior of others
- [00:27:42.690]and the behavior of each individual risk taker.
- [00:27:46.210]Each individual risk taker's risk taking,
- [00:27:48.900]if it's skilled, enhances the community
- [00:27:52.480]or destroys the community.
- [00:27:55.443]Each community member who's able to support
- [00:27:58.240]the risk taker then helps make sure
- [00:28:01.680]that that happens, does that make sense?
- [00:28:05.170]This is really important when we think about community
- [00:28:07.640]and notice now we're kind of moving very far away
- [00:28:09.920]from the concept of peer influence.
- [00:28:12.999]We've really stepped out of peer pressure
- [00:28:15.060]quite a bit and we've started to say,
- [00:28:17.110]what's the agreement, what's the covenant between us
- [00:28:19.637]as group members, what are we agreed upon
- [00:28:23.540]in order, we think, to sustain this?
- [00:28:27.559]And sometimes, again, if we're under 30
- [00:28:31.770]and that part of our brain hasn't built in
- [00:28:33.430]to sustain us at least through today (laughs)
- [00:28:36.599]and if we're older and starting to think about
- [00:28:38.730]these sorts of things maybe sustain us longterm.
- [00:28:42.740]It doesn't matter, because the effect is the same.
- [00:28:45.620]It may just get me through tonight.
- [00:28:48.090]I don't care if this little group exists in two years,
- [00:28:53.220]I won't be here, what the hell.
- [00:28:55.459]I care about are we there tonight.
- [00:28:57.710]Can I wear the letters proudly tonight?
- [00:29:00.890]Can I say they've got my back and can I say
- [00:29:03.610]I added to their success, I added to their reputation?
- [00:29:08.030]Now we'll talk about what adds to the reputation
- [00:29:10.933]in the elicit college drinking community
- [00:29:15.096]in a minute because some of that is part of the problem
- [00:29:20.320]perhaps and might be part of the entrenchment
- [00:29:22.560]as a matter of fact we think.
- [00:29:24.750]But let me finish by saying, here's the big surprise,
- [00:29:27.880]again elicit communities are just as much communities
- [00:29:32.920]and I love the Hells Angels cause they're such
- [00:29:34.650]a great example.
- [00:29:35.483]Motorcycle gangs are such a perfect example of this,
- [00:29:39.740]right, but so is every gang in every urban city.
- [00:29:44.290]In fact, you wanna be a member of that,
- [00:29:46.980]beat the shit out of somebody,
- [00:29:49.290]or even in some cases, forgive my language,
- [00:29:51.860]kill somebody, kill them
- [00:29:55.510]and that's how you'll gain membership.
- [00:29:57.010]Let me see if you're a risk taker
- [00:29:58.690]you willing to take life, to get caught
- [00:30:01.970]and have a life sentence?
- [00:30:03.430]Let's see, go kill somebody, let's see what happens.
- [00:30:06.020]This is a daily occurrence in a number
- [00:30:08.530]of our urban gangs.
- [00:30:10.340]Most gang membership, including women's gangs,
- [00:30:13.890]start by beating up the member,
- [00:30:16.680]that's your initiation.
- [00:30:18.920]Where on earth does hazing come from?
- [00:30:23.410]From a sociological perspective
- [00:30:26.180]hazing makes sense when we think about membership
- [00:30:29.410]and we think about what we have to do
- [00:30:31.680]to prove some kind of membership,
- [00:30:33.300]what we are willing to endure
- [00:30:36.160]to prove some kind of membership
- [00:30:38.160]and to find that kind of group identity.
- [00:30:41.677]Interestingly enough there's not a ton of hazing
- [00:30:45.240]but you certainly know hazing is very much
- [00:30:47.470]a part of occupational, recreational and obviously
- [00:30:50.330]elicit really high risk communities.
- [00:30:53.890]In fact, there might be a connection,
- [00:30:56.120]I haven't studied it yet I'd like to,
- [00:30:58.680]between those two things.
- [00:31:00.220]That in fact there might be a connection
- [00:31:01.740]between hazing because we know hazing happens
- [00:31:04.560]and here's a great example.
- [00:31:06.080]Female firefighters have endured unbelievable
- [00:31:12.056]issues around hazing because they are
- [00:31:14.170]female entering a male Edgework community.
- [00:31:16.730]The same has been true of soldiers
- [00:31:18.270]and part of that has to do with,
- [00:31:20.250]are you one of us,
- [00:31:22.717]are you really one of us or am I carrying you?
- [00:31:26.520]Cause I'm not in a group of carriers,
- [00:31:28.696]I'm in a group of risk takers.
- [00:31:31.010]Am I gonna carry you, let me see prove it to me.
- [00:31:34.650]So I'm going to haze you and see if you're up to snuff.
- [00:31:39.230]Lots of other power and control issues with that
- [00:31:41.520]but I do think there's something interesting in that
- [00:31:43.373]and the connection to Edgework communities.
- [00:31:47.080]So let's talk a little bit about what Stephen Lyng
- [00:31:50.067]and others have learned about some of the principles
- [00:31:53.080]of Edgework communities cause they're really interesting
- [00:31:54.910]and here's where I start to see some connections.
- [00:31:57.530]One, communities are known for their high risk taking,
- [00:32:00.110]risk taking becomes a part of member identity.
- [00:32:02.950]So part of this is the
- [00:32:08.310]larger cultural identity
- [00:32:12.730]of this group to the rest of the community.
- [00:32:16.720]Not like everyone else is a good label.
- [00:32:21.517]We're parasailers, not anybody can do this.
- [00:32:28.210]Right, just us, just the cool kids.
- [00:32:33.090]We are drinkers, we are heavy partyers.
- [00:32:37.120]Not everybody can do this, just us,
- [00:32:39.810]we're really good at it, we're known for it.
- [00:32:43.900]We're chess players, I mean we're serious about it,
- [00:32:47.980]we play chess and not everybody can do that,
- [00:32:51.600]though everyone wants to.
- [00:32:55.901]So you get the point.
- [00:32:56.734]The second thing that we think happens within
- [00:32:59.550]Edgework communities is this entrance and acceptance
- [00:33:02.450]to the communities is based upon the successful
- [00:33:04.590]negotiation of risk or getting to the edge and back
- [00:33:07.290]without affecting daily responsibilities.
- [00:33:09.410]So nothing could be more important to understanding
- [00:33:12.460]Edgework and understanding voluntary risk taking
- [00:33:15.133]than this concept of skill
- [00:33:18.500]and I'm gonna keep focusing here on skill
- [00:33:21.320]because it's really, really to me the center
- [00:33:23.680]of prevention and it's the center of Failsafe
- [00:33:27.280]as a prevention tool.
- [00:33:28.710]And so what we're talking about here is this idea
- [00:33:31.530]that I am an acceptable member if I can succeed.
- [00:33:35.320]If I don't succeed I'm not a successful member
- [00:33:38.010]and my membership is really tied
- [00:33:40.040]to my ability to succeed.
- [00:33:42.390]The best example that we have in the college setting
- [00:33:45.780]is that we hear oftentimes about a sorority sister
- [00:33:49.780]who becomes shamed out of the organization
- [00:33:52.590]as she brings shame on the organization in some way.
- [00:33:56.890]So we may not formally kick her out
- [00:33:59.400]by we might as well, we might as well,
- [00:34:02.700]because we've ostracized her, we've removed her
- [00:34:05.100]from the group, she no longer shows identity with us
- [00:34:08.630]because she doesn't maintain
- [00:34:11.310]the image that we want to maintain.
- [00:34:14.620]But this happens in workplaces every day,
- [00:34:16.400]this happens everywhere, this kind of
- [00:34:18.350]what it is to be kept a member in good standing.
- [00:34:22.530]And notice that the issue is to get to the edge and back
- [00:34:24.940]and as I've already described to you
- [00:34:26.440]we can't do that naturally.
- [00:34:29.194]Very few of us are gifted, born with this ability
- [00:34:33.299]to go to the edge and back.
- [00:34:35.440]This is a learned skill.
- [00:34:38.350]This is a learned skill.
- [00:34:39.770]Now we might be born with the proclivity
- [00:34:42.090]and we might be born with the interest.
- [00:34:44.560]We don't know, I mean remember in alcohol studies
- [00:34:47.310]we look for the predictive characteristic
- [00:34:49.150]of sensation seeking, right we look for children
- [00:34:51.410]who circled around and around and we went oh,
- [00:34:53.960]you're a drinker, you're gonna be a drinker (laughs).
- [00:34:57.592]If you like getting dizzy you're gonna be a drinker
- [00:34:59.250]and that's the best as we've done in terms
- [00:35:01.250]of predictive so we don't really know ultimately
- [00:35:03.661]if there is some kind of inborn quality.
- [00:35:07.139]Stephen Lyng and his associates argue,
- [00:35:11.070]and I haven't focused as much on this theory
- [00:35:13.490]cause I'm still trying to make sense out of it,
- [00:35:15.530]but they argue that this is also in reaction
- [00:35:17.950]to a highly, highly restrictive society.
- [00:35:21.940]And there is some connection here to college students
- [00:35:25.200]who are very much programmed into a success mode.
- [00:35:29.270]I have to be successful, I have to be hyper engaged,
- [00:35:32.780]I have to do more than my capacity,
- [00:35:35.500]especially if I'm gonna win a leadership award.
- [00:35:37.770]I have to do, I have to do, I have to do,
- [00:35:39.500]I have to do, I have to pay for it somehow.
- [00:35:42.460]I have to do I have to look good, I have to,
- [00:35:44.390]I have to, I have to, I have to.
- [00:35:46.400]The constraints in society, Stephen Lyng says,
- [00:35:51.180]is why people go jump off mountains
- [00:35:54.540]with their little winged outfits,
- [00:35:56.660]because there's a point of liberation to the point
- [00:35:58.970]he says of transcendence
- [00:36:01.200]that actually becomes something for us that is liberating,
- [00:36:04.160]that finally breaks out of the mold
- [00:36:05.930]and there's some truth to that certainly I think and
- [00:36:08.620]something as an answer to that in thinking about colleges.
- [00:36:12.700]I get accused,
- [00:36:13.630]every journal editor has slammed me
- [00:36:19.070]regularly whenever I talk about students as victims.
- [00:36:22.800]They get so mad at me, and they all write,
- [00:36:25.220]how dare you say students are victims,
- [00:36:26.730]well I think students are victims.
- [00:36:28.110]I really do, I think students are placed into a tube
- [00:36:31.820]that is very, very confining and constricted
- [00:36:34.740]that has very little autonomy, in fact less and less
- [00:36:37.970]as the day goes long,
- [00:36:39.800]and then is forced to sort of live within that tube
- [00:36:42.460]successfully for a period of time and hopefully
- [00:36:45.280]come out of it being tube shaped
- [00:36:48.730]because then I'm gonna go into a career (laughs).
- [00:36:51.160]Tubular, right?
- [00:36:54.080]So the truth is I'm learning how to be a good citizen
- [00:36:58.750]and sometimes learning how to be a good citizen
- [00:37:00.670]means learning how to follow all the rules,
- [00:37:03.137]learning how to be a number.
- [00:37:06.340]And so doesn't that make you just wanna
- [00:37:07.550]go jump off a mountain?
- [00:37:09.360]I mean it does, it kinda makes you wanna go
- [00:37:11.795]ride a rollercoaster, it makes you wanna go do something
- [00:37:14.100]that brings back my autonomy.
- [00:37:17.240]Something that brings back my individuality
- [00:37:21.130]and Stephan Lyng argues that this is why we see
- [00:37:23.830]voluntary risk taking and why we see the growth of it.
- [00:37:27.470]We see far more occupational and far more recreational
- [00:37:31.075]risk taking groups than we've ever seen before
- [00:37:34.810]and he argues this may be why.
- [00:37:37.490]So this entrance is very, very important in membership.
- [00:37:41.760]Successful risk taking provides social capital
- [00:37:44.000]to the members as I mentioned to you.
- [00:37:46.100]This is very important, if you succeed at risk taking
- [00:37:48.287]and you really go to the edge, you are legend.
- [00:37:52.856]There is a certain bar owner that will not be named
- [00:37:57.060]here in Lincoln, Nebraska
- [00:38:00.115]who boasts regularly, at least he did when I was here
- [00:38:04.000]I don't know maybe he's died I have no idea (laughs).
- [00:38:06.210]But used to boast regularly that he held the record
- [00:38:10.200]for the highest number of shots on his 21st birthday.
- [00:38:14.360]32, and we all said yeah of Godiva maybe.
- [00:38:20.340]32, you wouldn't pick up the 25th shot.
- [00:38:25.112]I mean it's just not physically possible
- [00:38:28.030]but that legend has been retold to me
- [00:38:30.730]by more students than I can tell you.
- [00:38:33.220]Well (mumbles) he's had 32,
- [00:38:36.035]so you worry about 21, that's nothing.
- [00:38:38.950]He's legend, that's his boast, do y'all get that (laughs)?
- [00:38:44.760]That's his boast, that's what he's proud of,
- [00:38:47.580]that's why he thinks you should come to his bar
- [00:38:51.272]and let me tell you is his bar a risk taking bar?
- [00:38:54.770]Of course it is (laughs)
- [00:38:57.170]that's his calling card.
- [00:38:59.230]Of course he's gonna attract Edgeworkers to that bar
- [00:39:01.447]and of course he did attract Edgeworkers to that bar,
- [00:39:04.460]perhaps still does today.
- [00:39:07.290]So when we think about Edgeworking,
- [00:39:09.340]even though us as the larger society may go,
- [00:39:12.210]oh how horrible, how awful,
- [00:39:14.180]we have instead a very, very well calculated
- [00:39:17.330]very, very carefully crafted calling card
- [00:39:21.260]that makes all of us proud,
- [00:39:23.170]that makes all of us look really, really good.
- [00:39:25.800]This should start to explain in your head
- [00:39:28.100]a whole lot of activities and behaviors you've seen,
- [00:39:30.810]is it starting to do that for you?
- [00:39:33.150]Are you starting to think about different examples
- [00:39:35.000]in your mind really?
- [00:39:37.690]When I was reading all of this
- [00:39:40.700]I kept thinking about the stories I would hear
- [00:39:44.077]as we worked in New Directions.
- [00:39:47.400]I kept hearing about the things that I was witnessing
- [00:39:51.140]at different fraternities and sororities
- [00:39:53.150]and other clubs and other groups
- [00:39:55.040]and residence hall floors and all kinds of things
- [00:39:59.250]and the student stories, and many of you know
- [00:40:01.517]that was my thing, I love to collect student stories,
- [00:40:04.220]I think there's great treasures in that
- [00:40:06.170]in our understanding all of this,
- [00:40:09.770]in all those stories I kept sort of hearing this theme
- [00:40:13.820]about something that for many of us
- [00:40:15.720]seemed really high risk and, therefore, negative,
- [00:40:19.470]was in fact something very, very positive.
- [00:40:24.020]To the point of where, if you recall
- [00:40:26.410]there was the popular time when we were doing
- [00:40:29.230]this work in the 90s, the early 2000s
- [00:40:33.210]that there was a time when you could go on a website
- [00:40:35.440]and see different people puking from parties.
- [00:40:39.960]This was like a thing you could go to
- [00:40:42.850]or you could still now go to fail sites,
- [00:40:45.871]sites where you see people failing,
- [00:40:48.500]people who are passed out, people who are markered.
- [00:40:51.896]So this kind of legend that to many of us
- [00:40:54.880]feels like it's dis-appreciating, it feels like
- [00:40:58.460]it's derogatory, it feels like it's negative
- [00:41:01.300]is in fact a point of pride and we have to ask ourselves,
- [00:41:05.080]putting aside our own judgment, why?
- [00:41:07.870]Why am I proud that I'm on the wall
- [00:41:11.040]of people who were markered after passing out being drunk?
- [00:41:14.870]Why?
- [00:41:16.000]Now notice there's not a single picture
- [00:41:17.670]of someone being taken away in an ambulance.
- [00:41:20.810]There's not a single picture about someone
- [00:41:23.890]being dropped off at the emergency room.
- [00:41:26.880]My argument from the day I started collecting
- [00:41:28.770]drinking stories from college students,
- [00:41:30.320]you never hear a negative story.
- [00:41:33.750]I never hear a sad drinking story, ever.
- [00:41:39.650]It took me forever to get them to even say one
- [00:41:41.790]after I asked and asked and asked.
- [00:41:44.330]Did anybody die?
- [00:41:46.763]Oh well yeah we all had this one.
- [00:41:49.900]Then I hear about them but never, never directly.
- [00:41:53.030]We have these euphoric memories,
- [00:41:54.870]you see that every game day (laughs)
- [00:41:58.127]when everyone comes back as alumni
- [00:41:59.580]and think I'm back at college and it was
- [00:42:01.980]all perfect when I was here.
- [00:42:04.100]I was zit free and wonderful and delicious
- [00:42:06.530]and everything was great and I can drink like a fish
- [00:42:09.810]and it doesn't affect me, even though I'm 62
- [00:42:13.250]and then I'm carted out by the emergency technicians
- [00:42:15.580]from the stadium (laughs).
- [00:42:17.730]So again this kind of idea that we don't really
- [00:42:20.780]look at the real picture, this calling card
- [00:42:23.160]may not be realistic.
- [00:42:25.880]Now part again of the Edgework mystique is
- [00:42:28.990]that these communities are able to do it,
- [00:42:33.260]they're skilled, they wouldn't have a reputation
- [00:42:35.180]if they didn't have skill.
- [00:42:36.650]So when we hear about high risk groups on campus
- [00:42:39.667]who have high GPAs, doesn't surprise me at all.
- [00:42:44.470]How better to prove that I'm an Edgeworker?
- [00:42:47.429]Because if I flunked out I would have gone over the edge,
- [00:42:52.000]I would have failed, I would have failed.
- [00:42:54.030]But the success is that I was drunk as a skunk
- [00:42:57.199]all the whole week before finals,
- [00:42:59.860]I was drunk every day, I think I was still
- [00:43:01.470]a little drunk when I went into my first final
- [00:43:03.650]and I have a 3.8 GPA.
- [00:43:08.710]And the group says, that's who we are,
- [00:43:13.210]that's who we are, so that's who you are.
- [00:43:17.510]That's who I am if I'm in the group
- [00:43:19.670]because that's who we are, making sense?
- [00:43:23.320]Questions, how you guys doing, you doing okay?
- [00:43:26.287]Unsuccessful risk taking leads to member disfavor
- [00:43:29.460]and often rejection, I think I've covered this point
- [00:43:31.630]but I can't say enough about it because part of
- [00:43:34.580]the principle of an Edgework community
- [00:43:39.206]is this very odd sense of justice
- [00:43:43.430]and I wanna say a word about this cause I think
- [00:43:45.120]it has everything to do with adjudication.
- [00:43:48.297]This odd sense of justice in an Edgework community
- [00:43:51.730]is you've brought shame to the community.
- [00:43:55.859]We are not as cool today as we were yesterday (laughs)
- [00:44:01.080]and, therefore, you are the weakest link goodbye.
- [00:44:04.930]Not you've not followed community standards
- [00:44:09.459]because community standards in actuality,
- [00:44:14.210]are successful risk taking.
- [00:44:16.940]So when my judicial board says,
- [00:44:21.030]you know we have a no drinking in the house policy,
- [00:44:24.510]and so you really can't drink here in the residence hall,
- [00:44:27.160]in the house or anything else and so now
- [00:44:28.730]we're gonna sanction you and do whatever,
- [00:44:31.130]if I'm an Edgeworker and part of an Edgework community
- [00:44:35.210]thinking what?
- [00:44:37.920]That's why I joined, what are you talking about?
- [00:44:40.140]That's why I'm here.
- [00:44:42.290]Ask any tour guide at the University of Nebraska
- [00:44:44.760]that they are asked about where parties are
- [00:44:46.820]almost every tour, ask them.
- [00:44:50.540]Because that's why they're coming,
- [00:44:51.977]that's why they're here.
- [00:44:54.570]And so to hear a rule or a regulation,
- [00:44:57.400]to have it adjudicated
- [00:44:59.480]makes far less sense for an Edgework community
- [00:45:02.930]but shame makes a great deal of sense.
- [00:45:05.900]Now not to the Edgeworker who's being kicked out,
- [00:45:09.230]I mean that's just a tragedy for that person
- [00:45:12.160]and it happens far more often outside of their control
- [00:45:14.760]than they wish because that standard may be very high,
- [00:45:17.930]but when we spend all this time adjudicating
- [00:45:19.840]in a set of rules that were never a basis
- [00:45:21.760]in the community we've missed the point
- [00:45:24.750]and of course we're gonna see recidivism.
- [00:45:27.610]I can guarantee it.
- [00:45:29.410]Of course we're gonna see an Edgework community
- [00:45:31.440]do everything possible to find ways to maintain
- [00:45:34.430]their Edgework identity.
- [00:45:36.830]If that means I'll have to drive 200 miles to do it
- [00:45:39.410]I'll drive 200 miles to do it.
- [00:45:42.499]So I'm gonna maintain that issue
- [00:45:46.740]because this is all about the image of the group
- [00:45:51.220]as risk takers.
- [00:45:53.219]So let's make all of these connections to college.
- [00:45:55.900]If you haven't yet,
- [00:45:57.639]again I'm just sharing with you my thought process,
- [00:46:00.880]what happened to me when I started reading this
- [00:46:02.610]and put all of this together, I went
- [00:46:04.800]hold on, this feels familiar.
- [00:46:08.090]Because I think about how drinking is always
- [00:46:11.060]done in groups during social events.
- [00:46:13.460]We see something very different if you see
- [00:46:15.600]a college student drinking alone.
- [00:46:18.740]Some of our best drinkers at this university
- [00:46:22.630]don't drink by themselves, and I don't count
- [00:46:24.980]the beer on Thursday watching TV.
- [00:46:28.110]I'm talking about a drinking event,
- [00:46:30.010]you all know what I mean, right?
- [00:46:32.190]I'm not talking about drinking, and this is one thing
- [00:46:34.420]that's very important if we're gonna adopt
- [00:46:36.030]Edgework in prevention.
- [00:46:37.810]The difference between drinking and engaging
- [00:46:41.220]in a high risk practice, these are different things.
- [00:46:46.060]Harm reduction, so if you're zero tolerance,
- [00:46:49.017]I'm sorry (laughs).
- [00:46:52.170]I'm sorry, because I can't go there
- [00:46:56.670]if I'm gonna follow this theory
- [00:46:58.680]and trust me that's gotten me in a lot of trouble (laughs).
- [00:47:01.840]It's gotten me almost fired several times.
- [00:47:04.760]But if I'm going to actually think about
- [00:47:08.398]what I'm going to do to engage in this
- [00:47:12.910]level of behavior I have to look at a drinking event.
- [00:47:18.101]So we have something called blackout drinking
- [00:47:20.818]in American college culture,
- [00:47:22.937]are you aware of this?
- [00:47:25.740]This is frightening to me, because it's no different
- [00:47:29.300]by the way than marijuana use in the new laws.
- [00:47:33.690]We just don't know enough to know that it's dangerous.
- [00:47:36.380]Ask college students polls across the country,
- [00:47:39.097]98% of college students don't think smoking pot is dangerous
- [00:47:42.970]and I would bet if you did a poll
- [00:47:44.900]and asked the same question about blackout drinking
- [00:47:46.820]the majority of college students would say
- [00:47:48.490]it's not dangerous because we've never
- [00:47:50.050]done anything about this.
- [00:47:52.200]Right now it feels like an easy edge.
- [00:47:56.150]Can you imagine blacking out now from this perspective?
- [00:48:01.220]Blacking out's about as close to the edge as you can get.
- [00:48:04.910]I don't even know what happened last night,
- [00:48:07.795]I don't even know, that's how good it was.
- [00:48:11.700]Not knowing what it's doing to my brain
- [00:48:13.500]or doing to my body or any of those other things
- [00:48:15.780]I think this is the ultimate display.
- [00:48:19.410]So my drinking event is not having the alcohol,
- [00:48:22.760]my drinking event is getting to the point of blackout,
- [00:48:25.510]that's the goal.
- [00:48:27.621]Getting to the point of being very, very, very drunk,
- [00:48:31.830]that's the goal.
- [00:48:33.520]So of course I pre-drink.
- [00:48:37.550]Of course I drink fast, of course I drink shots
- [00:48:41.595]and of course I drink flavored alcohol
- [00:48:45.181]because it's a lot easier to take
- [00:48:48.157]to get me to that state.
- [00:48:50.955]Because I'm after the state, it's the drinking event
- [00:48:54.979]that I'm after, does that make sense?
- [00:48:58.800]So that's why we always see it in groups,
- [00:49:00.340]in fact a lot of my studies here
- [00:49:03.170]found that there was a connection between
- [00:49:04.870]drinking events and storytelling.
- [00:49:07.470]That most drinking events that I uncovered
- [00:49:09.720]starting with a group storytelling.
- [00:49:12.340]Students would start by telling all their favorite
- [00:49:14.420]last drunk stories, they'd start their drinking that way.
- [00:49:19.350]It's like they were presetting the event.
- [00:49:22.290]Here's our expectations, here's what it's going
- [00:49:24.240]to look like, here's what it's going to be.
- [00:49:26.090]And again those stories never are,
- [00:49:28.880]hey remember last weekend when we took Bill to the ER
- [00:49:33.277](laughs) and he almost died, remember that?
- [00:49:36.920]Never that story, it's about Bill peeing,
- [00:49:39.220]you know someplace in public in the middle of the street
- [00:49:41.530]or it's about the fight that got started
- [00:49:43.770]with those other guys or it's about
- [00:49:45.690]some other kind of memory that is in their mind
- [00:49:49.980]on a positive level versus a negative level
- [00:49:52.350]or never, never failure, it's always about success.
- [00:49:54.850]Does that make sense to everybody?
- [00:49:57.115]So it's common that we would see it within a group
- [00:49:59.410]because it has to be witnessed,
- [00:50:01.160]it is no good for me to go parasailing and no one knows.
- [00:50:06.979]I'd have to take selfies the whole way down.
- [00:50:12.340]Look, look, look, look, look, look.
- [00:50:15.200]I'd have to take selfies and that's why we do that.
- [00:50:17.833]That's why we see a gazillion pictures
- [00:50:19.080]around drinking events, it's why we tell stories.
- [00:50:22.160]It has to be witnessed for it to be worthwhile
- [00:50:27.353]and so we certainly see that in college culture.
- [00:50:29.500]Drinkers with similar habits tend to cluster
- [00:50:31.240]in formal and informal social groups.
- [00:50:32.870]You will see this up close and personal
- [00:50:36.080]in Linda's presentation, and a lot of Linda's work
- [00:50:38.440]has really helped us understand this a whole lot more
- [00:50:41.560]but we've known this for a while
- [00:50:42.750]and again hopefully from a sociological standpoint
- [00:50:45.020]you understand why.
- [00:50:46.490]I'm looking for me, I'm coming on campus looking for me
- [00:50:50.150]or the me I wanna be,
- [00:50:52.540]and so of course I'm gonna go into that group.
- [00:50:54.820]Drinking is connected to membership rituals
- [00:50:56.810]and traditions in some student groups and communities,
- [00:50:59.700]frankly all the student groups and communities
- [00:51:02.080]have some form of ritual drinking event,
- [00:51:05.500]high risk event.
- [00:51:07.540]Why is hazing connected to membership?
- [00:51:11.500]Why is heavy alcohol use connected to membership,
- [00:51:14.830]there's only one reason,
- [00:51:17.080]because you're going to prove yourself
- [00:51:18.470]in the Edgework community.
- [00:51:19.520]Very important for us to think about this cause
- [00:51:21.980]it changes the way we do think about this a little bit.
- [00:51:24.730]So my restricting alcohol, let me tell you for example,
- [00:51:27.910]if I restrict alcohol from a ritual or a tradition
- [00:51:31.710]then what I'm doing is basically
- [00:51:33.193]shutting down the tradition
- [00:51:35.560]and I've had many conversations with many students
- [00:51:38.110]across the country about this.
- [00:51:39.790]I ask student leaders about this constantly
- [00:51:42.980]and students leaders say to me
- [00:51:44.870]that the cart is switched before the horse,
- [00:51:48.930]the drinking is sort of suspending the ritual
- [00:51:51.240]but it's become that change in the fact that this is
- [00:51:54.960]the whole point of the ritual and they've forgotten
- [00:51:57.021]over a period of time.
- [00:51:59.200]Let me give you an example of how powerful this is,
- [00:52:01.140]even in an adult community.
- [00:52:03.070]So the University of Georgia, and we're having
- [00:52:05.840]as we oft do town halls,
- [00:52:09.376]we're having our typical deliberations
- [00:52:10.640]as Linda and I do all the time
- [00:52:13.330]and I was doing this at the University of Georgia
- [00:52:15.730]and it was all about their game time work
- [00:52:18.470]and they had just passed a thing where
- [00:52:21.770]you can't bring bottles or cups into the stadium
- [00:52:24.610]but you can have it around campus on game day
- [00:52:26.570]and the prevention group there, a dear friend
- [00:52:29.460]of many of ours, prevention group there went around
- [00:52:32.420]and did a trash walk.
- [00:52:34.630]Right after the game started they went and collected
- [00:52:36.610]trash, collected like five tons of trash,
- [00:52:38.890]most of it bottles and cups, amazing.
- [00:52:41.650]So we had this town hall meeting and I was facilitating it
- [00:52:44.230]and we had the mayor, we had all these people
- [00:52:46.650]of Athens, Georgia and one alumni,
- [00:52:49.410]about 35 year old alumni stands up and goes,
- [00:52:52.130]let me tell you something,
- [00:52:54.320]the tradition at the University of Georgia
- [00:52:57.198]is that we have drinking at the game,
- [00:53:00.960]it is tradition it's the way that we are.
- [00:53:02.930]It's who we are, we are not Georgia
- [00:53:05.810]if we are not that passionate.
- [00:53:09.904]75 year old man stood up and said,
- [00:53:15.657]what the hell are you talking about?
- [00:53:18.130]I've been a ticket holder twice as long as you have,
- [00:53:20.880]we never did that, this was never part
- [00:53:23.940]of the tradition of being a Georgian
- [00:53:25.490]and I've paid twice as much as you have (laughs)
- [00:53:27.330]for season tickets.
- [00:53:29.220]This has nothing to do it.
- [00:53:30.810]Not unlike listening to Jim Griesen who used
- [00:53:33.530]to be vice chancellor here say to the Sigma Chis,
- [00:53:37.550]we never did that.
- [00:53:39.390]You are convinced this is the tradition of your group.
- [00:53:44.250]Let me show you someone before that tradition
- [00:53:47.075]who thought this was the tradition of the group.
- [00:53:50.430]You're going to see how leadership is a critical piece
- [00:53:53.890]of, I think, addressing an Edgework community
- [00:53:57.219]because Edgework communities are successful,
- [00:54:00.030]truly successful, truly safe by the way
- [00:54:02.880]and enable risk taking in a very satisfying way
- [00:54:05.630]without the harm, when there is active leadership involved.
- [00:54:10.530]The difference of an effective Edgework community
- [00:54:13.317]and an ineffective Edgework community
- [00:54:15.910]to me is leadership, pure and simple,
- [00:54:19.712]and that means leadership from the peers
- [00:54:23.260]but that means leadership from the extended peers,
- [00:54:25.730]the retired members, the older members
- [00:54:29.320]and they exist in every Edgework community.
- [00:54:32.179]Well I can't ride the bike anymore,
- [00:54:34.178]but let me tell you about the days I did.
- [00:54:37.810]Well I don't parasail anymore, but I can tell ya
- [00:54:40.857]we started it and here's what we did,
- [00:54:43.760]we made sure you young whippersnappers don't do that
- [00:54:47.780]anymore and that's where your problem.
- [00:54:50.680]That we have this kind of form of leadership
- [00:54:52.470]that becomes really critical for us
- [00:54:53.900]and I'm gonna argue that in the college setting
- [00:54:56.870]on of the voids is that level of leadership.
- [00:55:00.400]We're really missing that level of leadership,
- [00:55:03.210]particularly in our Greek advisors.
- [00:55:05.680]New members are most vulnerable and least successful.
- [00:55:08.520]First and second year students account
- [00:55:10.040]for the largest majority of acute intoxication injuries.
- [00:55:12.420]Linda's gonna share data with you
- [00:55:14.979]that's gonna show you that an awful lot of the problem
- [00:55:18.195]tends to be your first year students, agreed?
- [00:55:20.832]Right can you almost pick em (laughs)
- [00:55:23.379]as they move in?
- [00:55:26.019]Or you're gonna in a hospital within a month.
- [00:55:28.270]And it's interesting because so many of us
- [00:55:30.310]have worked so hard in orientation,
- [00:55:32.210]we've now seen and not just here,
- [00:55:33.710]I'm gonna tell you this happens nationally,
- [00:55:35.700]we've done such a good job on the first week of campus
- [00:55:38.958]that now we're seeing our highest risk behavior
- [00:55:41.870]in October (laughs).
- [00:55:43.940]We're great through end of August and September
- [00:55:46.320]but October rolls around and it's anybody's game (laughs).
- [00:55:49.710]Right, it's getting delayed,
- [00:55:51.635]for some campuses it's delayed to January.
- [00:55:53.390]Miami of Ohio had their first student death this year,
- [00:55:56.463]a really serious issue in January,
- [00:55:59.097]coming back from winter break.
- [00:56:01.490]So this is not just a beginning of school thing
- [00:56:03.410]but it is almost always a new student thing.
- [00:56:06.060]Let's think about that from the point
- [00:56:07.880]of Edgework for a minute.
- [00:56:09.875]Why are first year students going to the hospital
- [00:56:14.670]or dying or getting hurt more than anyone else
- [00:56:17.257]in the Edgework community, any guesses?
- [00:56:20.980]Inexperience, doesn't it make sense?
- [00:56:23.296]Poor skill.
- [00:56:25.610]I have a video I'm gonna show you in the Failsafe Toolkit
- [00:56:28.630]that explains this of a soccer player
- [00:56:30.220]who wants to be just as good as this top soccer team
- [00:56:32.940]and tries to do the moves of the top soccer team
- [00:56:35.500]without any of the training and she pulls her ACL,
- [00:56:38.480]of course she does, of course she does.
- [00:56:41.758]But she thinks that's how she's going to get in
- [00:56:44.400]so she behaves in the same way.
- [00:56:46.230]So we see students drinking up,
- [00:56:47.820]we've known this concept in prevention
- [00:56:49.600]for a very long time.
- [00:56:50.800]Drinking up to what the expectation is
- [00:56:53.770]of the rest of the community but doing so
- [00:56:57.430]not because of peer pressure or because of peer modeling,
- [00:57:00.240]those things are true, but really because
- [00:57:03.260]that's the bar to get in.
- [00:57:06.500]That's the admission standard, does that make sense?
- [00:57:09.940]If they drink that much, I must drink that much
- [00:57:12.550]to stay up with them and to be accepted
- [00:57:14.910]as a member of this group, only I don't have
- [00:57:17.420]any of the skill to do that.
- [00:57:20.260]I don't have any of the skill,
- [00:57:21.600]I'm not trained to do that, my body's not prepared
- [00:57:23.900]to do that, I just can't do it
- [00:57:26.090]and so I'm the one who gets sent into
- [00:57:27.700]the hospital or worse.
- [00:57:30.890]So let's talk about skill for a minute
- [00:57:33.430]because it is the ticket.
- [00:57:35.330]It is the most important thing and I want us
- [00:57:37.330]to think about how we gain skill and why, by the way,
- [00:57:41.090]we keep focusing on alcohol education
- [00:57:43.540]and why that's not necessarily a bad idea
- [00:57:45.370]but we might be doing it wrong.
- [00:57:48.057]Cause I argue, Linda's never argued against
- [00:57:51.118]alcohol education, it's an important piece,
- [00:57:54.020]it's just not the centerpiece.
- [00:57:56.970]Especially if what we're talking about is the tube.
- [00:58:00.237]Let me teach you how to drink
- [00:58:01.940]in the most boring way possible,
- [00:58:05.080]let me teach you how to never take a risk again, interested?
- [00:58:10.000]No (laughs) gosh why not?
- [00:58:12.958]Here are some of the questions that an
- [00:58:16.080]Edgework community would ask.
- [00:58:18.440]Can you get to the edge of the cliff without falling off?
- [00:58:21.430]Can you do it and not get in trouble?
- [00:58:23.929]Can you do it and still make it to class,
- [00:58:26.880]finish the paper or ace the test?
- [00:58:29.614]Can you do it and not get accused of something?
- [00:58:32.600]Can you do it without anyone
- [00:58:34.470]getting upset or angry with you?
- [00:58:37.678]Any I wanna talk about this one particularly because
- [00:58:39.900]it seems to be very important in a lot of the work
- [00:58:42.060]I've done with students,
- [00:58:44.050]that part of the issue and in fact sometimes
- [00:58:46.170]the greater concern is not my physical safety.
- [00:58:49.980]It's not breaking my leg or having you pump my stomach.
- [00:58:55.650]It's not any of that, it's not even being
- [00:58:57.820]stuck in detox for the night, as gross as that is
- [00:59:01.100]if you've ever been to detox.
- [00:59:03.640]It's not any of that stuff, it's that someone's
- [00:59:06.740]pissed at me cause they had to come get me out of detox.
- [00:59:10.530]It's that somebody's pissed at me cause they
- [00:59:12.137]had to wreck the party and throw everything away.
- [00:59:17.017]It's like in the 70s when someone flushed the pot,
- [00:59:22.010]right not the most popular person in the room.
- [00:59:26.595]So anger and disappointment sometimes
- [00:59:29.900]is a much higher motivator and we might build skill
- [00:59:33.497]based upon that and so it's interesting
- [00:59:36.460]cause one thing we've tried to integrate
- [00:59:38.220]is that concept into some of the prevention work
- [00:59:41.390]because a student will tell you that's exactly where I live.
- [00:59:45.020]That's exactly where I live
- [00:59:46.900]is acceptance or refusal from my peers
- [00:59:50.115]and again, why leadership is so important.
- [00:59:52.340]Yes sir.
- [00:59:53.737]You were talking earlier
- [00:59:55.614]about this concept of shame
- [00:59:57.211]and is that related to?
- [00:59:58.870]Yes, shame that I don't have enough skills
- [01:00:01.350]to stay up with the group.
- [01:00:03.090]Shame that I'm not as good of a risk taker
- [01:00:04.955]as my peers.
- [01:00:07.530]Shame that I failed, and the word here is fail.
- [01:00:11.657]And why we call this Failsafe,
- [01:00:13.730]because fail is such a strong concept
- [01:00:16.457]here in this whole risk taking.
- [01:00:19.500]Risk taking is not risk taking if I fail.
- [01:00:23.660]I'm not a risk taker if I fail (laughs)
- [01:00:26.310]right I'm just stupid.
- [01:00:27.910]How many people have heard your students say,
- [01:00:30.350]the reason someone was arrested, hurt, injured, died
- [01:00:34.450]was because they were a stupid drinker?
- [01:00:38.464]You see it?
- [01:00:41.240]So being labeled a stupid drinker is shame.
- [01:00:46.110]And not being able to succeed is shameful.
- [01:00:51.340]Now quite honestly this suggests to us (laughs),
- [01:00:55.540]you hear that totally gonna blow your mind, blew mine,
- [01:00:59.300]that in fact what an Edgework community is after
- [01:01:02.200]is the same thing harm reduction prevention is after.
- [01:01:06.210]It's just going at it a different way
- [01:01:08.960]because we tell everyone that harm reduction prevention
- [01:01:11.710]is not taking the risk
- [01:01:14.260]and what we really need to tell them
- [01:01:15.710]is taking a skilled risk, it's taking a calculated risk.
- [01:01:19.400]And our alcohol education does do that by the way.
- [01:01:22.610]Our alcohol education is very good.
- [01:01:23.990]Social host training has been wonderful,
- [01:01:26.340]party training is great.
- [01:01:27.960]It's saying I'm not gonna tell you not to have a party,
- [01:01:30.077]I'm gonna tell you how to have a party
- [01:01:30.910]that doesn't get busted.
- [01:01:32.450]That's why we called that on the website
- [01:01:34.519]and that's why we suggest to everyone across the country
- [01:01:37.460]that now everyone's got party planners.
- [01:01:39.639]It's something we created here was to simply
- [01:01:42.800]say to students, here's how not to get your party busted.
- [01:01:46.610]I'm not gonna tell you about a socially responsible party.
- [01:01:49.903]How many of those do you wanna go to?
- [01:01:52.943]I am hosting a socially responsible party
- [01:01:55.790]next Saturday night, wanna come?
- [01:01:57.310]We're going to talk
- [01:01:59.538](audience laughs)
- [01:02:00.590]a lot about our feelings.
- [01:02:06.800]So again this idea that what we're ultimately
- [01:02:08.978]after here is to help you calculate your risk better.
- [01:02:13.180]To help you succeed, now by the way
- [01:02:15.080]one of the ways that you do that
- [01:02:18.030]is that you modify your risk taking.
- [01:02:21.610]Very important, and you'll see throughout the toolkit
- [01:02:24.220]this is something we emphasize.
- [01:02:26.340]That sometimes, and this is why peer leadership
- [01:02:28.860]and peer enforcement is critical.
- [01:02:31.070]Someone who turns to you that you trust and respect
- [01:02:34.680]who says to you, whoa pony,
- [01:02:37.440]sit down, you are not ready for that,
- [01:02:42.070]back to the bunny hill with you.
- [01:02:44.783]Love ya, believe in you, someday we'll take
- [01:02:48.050]the big hill together, but not today,
- [01:02:51.901]not today.
- [01:02:54.157]And that's not happening in our communities.
- [01:02:57.930]That's what's missing in our communities
- [01:03:00.810]and that's really what Failsafe is trying to get to
- [01:03:03.370]and trying to be about and why this theory
- [01:03:05.240]got me so excited.
- [01:03:06.999]When you're excited for 10 years it's excited,
- [01:03:09.810]let me tell you.
- [01:03:11.760]Very few things excite you for 10 years.
- [01:03:13.420]Don't you love these drawings?
- [01:03:16.157]The staff, AIR is an amazing place
- [01:03:20.790]I have to tell you.
- [01:03:21.623]We have officers all over the country
- [01:03:22.720]that are amazing, we have about 6000 people working there,
- [01:03:25.930]most of them working for government agencies,
- [01:03:27.810]a lot of what really funds me is government agencies
- [01:03:30.330]not this kind of work (laughs).
- [01:03:32.140]And I do a lot of patient engagement work
- [01:03:34.850]and try to apply some of the same things
- [01:03:36.380]but we have this amazing education technology unit
- [01:03:40.937]because education's a big part of what we do
- [01:03:43.860]and they do, wait till you see,
- [01:03:46.030]they just do incredible work
- [01:03:48.397]and I was so grateful for them.
- [01:03:50.090]And we spent a lot of time, by the way,
- [01:03:52.270]thinking about, this is all art from the website,
- [01:03:54.960]we spent a lot of time thinking about the art.
- [01:03:57.570]We spent a lot of time thinking about gender representation
- [01:03:59.970]and race representation and every other
- [01:04:02.840]politically correct representation (laughs)
- [01:04:04.840]and whatnot and we had an amazing student leader group
- [01:04:08.877]who gave us very honest, direct feedback.
- [01:04:11.130]One of those members is here right now
- [01:04:13.293]from Nebraska, yay,
- [01:04:16.258]and Jackson gave us great feedback
- [01:04:18.190]and was wonderful about his feedback
- [01:04:20.260]cause he was also encouraging, he's just a nice guy.
- [01:04:22.900]So he would say, no that doesn't work at all
- [01:04:24.860]but that was really a good try (laughs).
- [01:04:27.255]Very helpful feedback
- [01:04:30.050]from the name on.
- [01:04:31.840]We just asked about everything and so we had
- [01:04:33.630]to kind of ask about what's the visual
- [01:04:35.790]that we're gonna use and we went for something
- [01:04:38.140]that was easy to be as neutral as possible.
- [01:04:42.350]Yes sir.
- [01:04:43.350]Can you speak,
- [01:04:45.074]Yeah.
- [01:04:45.907]About the whole sexual assault thing.
- [01:04:51.260]Yeah
- [01:04:53.935](audience member mumbles)
- [01:04:57.416]I consider it a skill.
- [01:05:01.036]Or is that?
- [01:05:02.687]So I wanna tell you what that is,
- [01:05:04.226]and it's why we have this image and why we talk about this.
- [01:05:06.680]We didn't do it directly, we did it indirectly.
- [01:05:09.960]Right now if you'd like to walk into a political minefield
- [01:05:12.560]make any suggestion whatsoever make any suggestion
- [01:05:13.980]that alcohol is related to sexual assault.
- [01:05:16.530]Even though we all know that it is and so we try to
- [01:05:18.720]walk that minefield very carefully
- [01:05:21.580]but everyone's interested in sexual assault.
- [01:05:23.690]There's not a soul who is interested in Failsafe
- [01:05:25.790]not interested in it.
- [01:05:27.330]I will argue that the same principles apply
- [01:05:30.040]but they apply a little bit differently
- [01:05:31.790]and one of the reasons why we ask this question
- [01:05:34.620]is because of sexual assault.
- [01:05:38.350]So we ask about unskilled risk taking
- [01:05:42.439]and what does that mean around sexual interaction?
- [01:05:46.470]What is the skill around sexual interaction
- [01:05:49.382]that lets me take a risk?
- [01:05:50.880]Now by the way, the risk
- [01:05:53.290]is exactly the risk we all experience every day
- [01:05:56.330]around sexual interaction, would you
- [01:05:57.970]like to have sex with me?
- [01:06:00.752]Yes or no, do you like me yes or no?
- [01:06:04.743]Putting yourself out there to ask for a sexual engagement
- [01:06:09.610]even sometimes with your spouse is tough,
- [01:06:13.240]it's a big risk, it's your most vulnerable place
- [01:06:16.044]and so if I'm not comfortable doing that
- [01:06:19.100]I'm gonna find other ways to get to the same issue
- [01:06:21.140]and remember we have success stories constantly
- [01:06:23.510]and a success story for males in high risk groups
- [01:06:26.680]sometimes becomes I got laid.
- [01:06:29.986]And so my being able to say, and on top of it all
- [01:06:32.790]I got laid and my research here,
- [01:06:35.404]sad but true, was I got laid by this kind of woman,
- [01:06:41.686]not that kind of woman.
- [01:06:43.970]It wasn't an easy conquest, what the
- [01:06:46.603]fraternity men here at the time,
- [01:06:49.090]described to me as being the ugly fat chick,
- [01:06:52.890]those were their words.
- [01:06:55.100]Those women stayed and let themselves be captured,
- [01:06:59.640]let themselves be used in whatever way,
- [01:07:03.890]because that was part of their identity,
- [01:07:05.820]part of their membership
- [01:07:08.490]into what a college coed is supposed to be
- [01:07:11.320]but the men said the smart beautiful women
- [01:07:13.930]go home early and go home together
- [01:07:17.623]though I have to actually ask them
- [01:07:20.810]and she's smart and she's beautiful and I'm scared
- [01:07:23.220]to death to ask her
- [01:07:25.630]because I'll fail at that, I don't think
- [01:07:27.660]I have the skill it takes to do that.
- [01:07:30.646]What are the skills it takes to do that?
- [01:07:34.290]How do I train myself in doing that?
- [01:07:38.950]Thank god we have the work of people like Jan Dees,
- [01:07:42.080]and women's centers that are trying to ask that question,
- [01:07:44.480]what do I need to be involved sexually?
- [01:07:48.430]How do I ask someone and succeed?
- [01:07:51.260]And what if no is the success?
- [01:07:54.550]What if no is the greatest word I could hear?
- [01:07:57.410]Do you want to have sex with me, no oh thank God.
- [01:07:59.460]What if (laughs), I avoided that train wreck.
- [01:08:03.564]What if that was the best thing that ever happened to me?
- [01:08:07.240]So again I think there's a lot of connection here,
- [01:08:11.110]it's a little bit more complicated,
- [01:08:13.060]but I'm gonna argue that some of the same
- [01:08:15.940]acceptance pieces need to be disconnected
- [01:08:18.650]and they start for me at very specific behaviors
- [01:08:22.460]and I try to tie it around alcohol.
- [01:08:24.530]There's much more work that needs to be done.
- [01:08:26.160]I would do a very different toolkit if I were
- [01:08:28.390]just addressing sexual assault and I'd have
- [01:08:30.900]a lot more smarter people around me than me
- [01:08:33.270]but what I really think that happens
- [01:08:36.230]is there are many sexual situations
- [01:08:38.510]that get set up without intervention
- [01:08:41.690]and this is a stupid risk taker, would you agree?
- [01:08:45.630]This is an unsuccessful Edgeworker
- [01:08:48.306]because she's drunk and she doesn't know what she's doing
- [01:08:52.610]and she's not able to consent
- [01:08:54.770]and he should have a different set of skills
- [01:08:56.910]and he's drunk frankly.
- [01:08:59.360]Worse than he's drunk he's love drunk
- [01:09:03.378]and so finding ways to, who would intervene
- [01:09:05.700]in that situation or how would you negotiate
- [01:09:07.698]that risk taking?
- [01:09:10.270]How could I do this right?
- [01:09:13.458]How could I do this right is what we're ultimately after.
- [01:09:17.330]Okay, is this making sense everybody, you doing okay?
- [01:09:21.680]I have no idea what time it is, so someone is gonna have to,
- [01:09:24.530]Megan, thank you, so just scream it,
- [01:09:28.640]just kinda go, shut up, we're gonna get lunch.
- [01:09:31.930]You won't be the first.
- [01:09:34.760]So what makes an Edgework community go over the edge?
- [01:09:37.630]Hopefully you're understanding this and I'm gonna
- [01:09:39.710]really make this point so forgive me.
- [01:09:42.410]The risk behavior of the members no longer
- [01:09:44.450]brings positive outcomes.
- [01:09:47.360]Right, so you want to see a failed Edgework community
- [01:09:51.670]that we constantly are in trouble.
- [01:09:53.860]In the college campus setting it means
- [01:09:56.740]that administrators are pissed at us,
- [01:09:58.820]it means that police are targeting us,
- [01:10:02.786]it means, and I put the red face on purpose,
- [01:10:05.360]that we are shamed.
- [01:10:08.100]At James Madison University in Virginia
- [01:10:10.470]I held another town hall meeting with just the Greek leaders
- [01:10:14.503]and with the local community cause a lot of their
- [01:10:17.350]Greek community had gone out into the community residences
- [01:10:20.210]and police and all the usual suspects
- [01:10:24.020]as Tom Cassidy used to say.
- [01:10:26.380]A lot of Greek leaders, 60 Greek leaders,
- [01:10:29.463]they're a very heavy Greek campus as well.
- [01:10:31.938]To a member, the Greek member stood up
- [01:10:35.400]and they said, the community hates us,
- [01:10:38.400]the community hates us and they treat it
- [01:10:41.180]like victimhood, right,
- [01:10:43.730]I'm so offended the community hates us.
- [01:10:46.166]In fact Madison was one of the first places
- [01:10:49.230]where the neighborhood association sued
- [01:10:51.570]one of the fraternities to make them move
- [01:10:53.506]out of the neighborhood, that's intense.
- [01:10:56.524]And they did twice.
- [01:10:58.966]Because they felt there was nothing else they could do,
- [01:11:01.290]they felt like there was no other choice for them.
- [01:11:03.520]They had done everything else they thought they could.
- [01:11:05.550]They had reached out, they had done the whole bit.
- [01:11:08.164]However this issue that said I'm hated
- [01:11:10.583]by this community was really the only thing
- [01:11:13.050]that drove them to the summit to begin with.
- [01:11:15.804]It wasn't till they finally realized, oh my gosh
- [01:11:18.760]they're suing us, that they got serious,
- [01:11:21.920]cause I've been with James Madison for five years
- [01:11:25.863]and my first visit to James Madison
- [01:11:28.060]was like oh isn't that nice, an alcohol guy (laughs),
- [01:11:30.364]isn't that cute, thanks for coming (laughs).
- [01:11:34.084]Don't even ask me about going to the University of Virginia.
- [01:11:37.010]Anyway, so part of the challenge here
- [01:11:43.164]is again how do I build a way in which
- [01:11:46.480]there is failure for the Edgework group.
- [01:11:51.490]If I'm a parasailing club and I lose a member
- [01:11:57.040]a year to parasailing and nobody knows
- [01:12:02.044]then I'm not telling anybody am I,
- [01:12:05.430]because I'm not putting it in the brochure,
- [01:12:07.170]only lost one this year, not putting it on the brochure.
- [01:12:12.040]When the media stops covering deaths by alcohol
- [01:12:15.960]on college campuses I lose this opportunity
- [01:12:20.124]for a community to recognize what's going on.
- [01:12:24.390]The reason why Nebraska focuses so heavily
- [01:12:28.290]on environmental prevention, I believe,
- [01:12:32.420]and I'm now believing more than I ever have before
- [01:12:35.910]if that was possible, is that it is
- [01:12:39.150]only through environmental prevention that you create
- [01:12:42.338]the environment that creates shame for the
- [01:12:45.404]Edgework community and motivates for some change.
- [01:12:49.850]Because if there's no cop to be mad at you,
- [01:12:52.210]if there's no administrator to be mad at you,
- [01:12:54.700]if everyone just kind of thinks ha ha ha,
- [01:12:56.670]well that's college students,
- [01:12:59.010]then you are succeeding.
- [01:13:02.030]You can have members dying constantly
- [01:13:04.080]but no one says a word.
- [01:13:05.670]No one looks you in the eye and says, are you telling me
- [01:13:09.255]that a member who put their trust in you
- [01:13:12.270]died because of you?
- [01:13:14.320]Are you serious?
- [01:13:16.430]Until that moment happens nothing's gonna change.
- [01:13:20.750]I've argued for years that a community that is tolerant,
- [01:13:24.550]ambiguous, is part of the problem.
- [01:13:28.470]In fact I think I even say that in a slide,
- [01:13:30.370]oh here we go (laughs) how great.
- [01:13:33.130]Yes Deb.
- [01:13:35.478]Yeah.
- [01:13:44.740]No let me say it this way.
- [01:13:51.050]Let me see if I really know the answer to that.
- [01:13:55.410]I think of two things.
- [01:13:56.910]One, I don't need to,
- [01:14:01.330]this isn't your mother.
- [01:14:03.550]The shame you may feel from your mother
- [01:14:06.270]we don't need to talk about at lunch,
- [01:14:07.800]we don't need to talk about.
- [01:14:08.890]The shame you feel from your mother is very different
- [01:14:11.660]because of her influence on you,
- [01:14:14.080]that would be what I would call in group shame.
- [01:14:16.310]Let's not overdo shame, because shame is only
- [01:14:19.380]part of this, right I don't want you to feel
- [01:14:21.150]like it's a psychological meaning of shame,
- [01:14:23.640]shame is a piece.
- [01:14:25.050]But it's not the peer motivator, the peer motivator
- [01:14:27.040]is you don't come to the next meeting.
- [01:14:29.920]Shame is, or failure is, partly shame that you feel
- [01:14:34.280]but it's not the sole motivator.
- [01:14:36.410]It's simply the inability to continue the activity.
- [01:14:38.870]It's being cut off in your career.
- [01:14:40.340]Imagine if someone said well you failed as being
- [01:14:42.200]an accountant so you can't be an accountant anymore,
- [01:14:44.870]you're done, you'll never do it again,
- [01:14:48.070]not with us, you'll never work in this town again.
- [01:14:51.200]So it's a little bit different.
- [01:14:53.218]The respect issue is an interesting issue
- [01:14:55.540]because I don't think you have to respect authority
- [01:14:58.330]to recognize that that cop mad at you is a problem.
- [01:15:02.870]It's a bigger problem for the leader of your group
- [01:15:05.570]who now is constantly being yelled at.
- [01:15:07.710]So we brought students to neighborhood association meetings
- [01:15:10.860]and watched them just eat them for dinner,
- [01:15:13.840]they just went after them.
- [01:15:15.836]Those poor student leaders who had to take
- [01:15:18.490]responsibility for everybody, every party
- [01:15:20.730]that ever was ever.
- [01:15:23.300]And so I don't think they had any great respect
- [01:15:25.490]for that neighborhood association but they were
- [01:15:27.410]clearly a threat, a threat to my survival.
- [01:15:30.480]Does that make sense?
- [01:15:32.656]So I'm gonna tell you that these kind of communities
- [01:15:36.200]live very, very well if there's ambivalence
- [01:15:38.440]in the environment.
- [01:15:40.090]If there's tolerance, if there's just even ambivalence.
- [01:15:43.210]In other words, every student group I've ever
- [01:15:45.700]worked with ever asks me
- [01:15:48.260]time and time again for a bright line policy.
- [01:15:52.580]They think our policies are too lame.
- [01:15:56.800]I'm gonna tell you, go out, every student survey
- [01:16:00.000]that has ever been done about this,
- [01:16:01.730]people marveled when Harvard did the study
- [01:16:03.788]that said students supported policy change.
- [01:16:06.174]You know why, it's clear.
- [01:16:09.360]What we hate is when you're ambivalent, students tell us
- [01:16:13.940]over and over again.
- [01:16:15.110]Well we have to look at the merits of the situation,
- [01:16:17.460]bullshit tell me.
- [01:16:19.220]Can I or can't I?
- [01:16:21.850]Beer open in the room, beer not open in the room,
- [01:16:25.056]just tell me.
- [01:16:27.394]Three people is a party, five people is a party, tell me.
- [01:16:33.520]We had students when the Greek Affairs
- [01:16:36.100]which has worked on this so hard for so long,
- [01:16:38.450]when Greek Affairs would go up and say
- [01:16:40.840]we're gonna have special freshman events that are dry
- [01:16:43.850]and then we defined dry, students would go up
- [01:16:47.500]during those Thursday night group settings
- [01:16:50.320]and they would end it around eight,
- [01:16:52.240]they would go touch their sorority door.
- [01:16:54.550]I'm home the event is over.
- [01:16:57.040]But I see adults do that all the time,
- [01:16:59.575]all the time.
- [01:17:01.415]It depends on how you define that word (laughs),
- [01:17:04.520]sound familiar?
- [01:17:06.050]Right we do that often and so that kind of legalism
- [01:17:08.674]is a part of it but that legalism is the way
- [01:17:12.410]in which a student thinks and a bright line distinction
- [01:17:15.874]is what most students ask for.
- [01:17:18.960]Because ambivalence again just simply allows for us
- [01:17:21.860]to look at it from a different perspective.
- [01:17:25.830]Very, very important to think about bright lines.
- [01:17:27.560]Now again I'm gonna say to you
- [01:17:29.480]that doesn't mean we go and we create all these policies
- [01:17:31.560]that are 500 words long and have every possible situation,
- [01:17:35.196]every latest substance de jour,
- [01:17:38.370]oh and by the way don't take this,
- [01:17:39.874]and don't do this that y'all started doing last week.
- [01:17:42.375]It's impossible to do that.
- [01:17:46.030]I do think it means that we help students
- [01:17:48.880]think about what I call in Failsafe living policies.
- [01:17:53.200]How do I live it?
- [01:17:54.790]What does it really mean for me to live?
- [01:17:56.960]Here's my favorite example when we did
- [01:17:58.630]Greek re-evolution which is, by the way Nebraska
- [01:18:00.410]is where all this started.
- [01:18:02.010]This is really based off the Greek re-evolution
- [01:18:04.000]grant that we had several years ago,
- [01:18:06.668]and we had one sorority, John Geer remembers,
- [01:18:09.970]that had a poster that said, Xs don't dance on tables.
- [01:18:14.930]We made social norms posters, what's your norm?
- [01:18:17.570]Forget ours, tell us yours.
- [01:18:19.720]What's your rule, what's your living rule?
- [01:18:22.410]How will you live as a community here
- [01:18:25.372]so that you are safe and sound
- [01:18:27.260]and for this sorority it was we don't dance on tables
- [01:18:31.950]so the rest of us, meaningless,
- [01:18:34.427]especially if we like this sorority of women
- [01:18:37.520]dancing on tables, meaningless.
- [01:18:39.640]For the women, deeply meaningful
- [01:18:42.370]because there's a level that you get at
- [01:18:44.850]where you can start dancing on a table comfortably
- [01:18:47.840]and we all know when we're there.
- [01:18:49.804]And we all know what follows,
- [01:18:51.820]if you can dance on a table let me tell you
- [01:18:53.750]what else you can do.
- [01:18:56.010]And so we say that's the line
- [01:19:00.270]and that was the line they adhered to.
- [01:19:01.660]They made posters, they were up all over their house
- [01:19:04.510]and that was the whole concept was
- [01:19:06.370]what's the living policy for this group?
- [01:19:10.450]Every Edgework community has rules,
- [01:19:13.070]please don't think they don't
- [01:19:14.820]and they follow those rules almost better
- [01:19:16.960]than the rest of us because the rules are life and death,
- [01:19:20.280]the rules are success or failure.
- [01:19:22.530]The rules matter, check my parachute.
- [01:19:25.947]It's not just bureaucracy, you're not doing it
- [01:19:29.080]just for something to do or to give someone else
- [01:19:31.770]a job you're doing it so I don't die
- [01:19:34.710]and so I do it, I adhere to it, because I see
- [01:19:38.170]it's value, does this make sense?
- [01:19:41.090]So when we think about this I don't wanna lose
- [01:19:44.350]because much of what I'm gonna tell you about
- [01:19:46.490]in the Failsafe program is very much
- [01:19:49.111]individual strategies and it makes sense
- [01:19:53.210]that it would be individual strategies certainly.
- [01:19:56.040]But the truth of the matter is
- [01:19:58.120]it must be surrounded environmentally.
- [01:20:00.830]In fact, to the point where I have a brochure
- [01:20:03.970]to administrators about this where I say,
- [01:20:07.467]if you're not going to address the environment,
- [01:20:10.370]if no student ever feels the threat
- [01:20:13.850]of having any issue with administration,
- [01:20:17.540]with adjudication or with the community
- [01:20:20.840]by their high risk practices, successful or failure,
- [01:20:24.530]then this is probably not the program for you
- [01:20:27.440]cause it can't work.
- [01:20:28.930]Just like we say in a social norms,
- [01:20:30.670]a social campaign doesn't work if that's the norm (laughs).
- [01:20:34.950]Right, can't work if that's the norm.
- [01:20:38.126]The pressure that I apply has to be from some real place
- [01:20:42.690]and I think, I've argued that part of that real place,
- [01:20:46.340]talk is not cheap, it's really the talk.
- [01:20:48.930]People talk in the community.
- [01:20:50.310]Linda and I, I'll never forget the day,
- [01:20:52.200]I probably moved right after it (laughs)
- [01:20:54.440]when Linda and I were sitting in the union
- [01:20:56.350]having coffee and we heard two freshman girls
- [01:20:58.920]walk by us and one of the girls said,
- [01:21:00.590]it's called high risk drinking and walked by
- [01:21:03.510]and we're like, we can go home, let's go home.
- [01:21:06.210](audience laughs)
- [01:21:07.130]And I just moved, hell I'm getting a professor job,
- [01:21:11.660]I left (laughs), that's awful.
- [01:21:16.572]So anyway, I just have to make that point.
- [01:21:19.290]Here's why I'm gonna make that point.
- [01:21:20.970]Here's what happens in our processing
- [01:21:24.320]of Edgework communities.
- [01:21:25.300]I don't know if you saw, but a study was released
- [01:21:27.580]from Brown University.
- [01:21:29.200]Two researchers by the way who are brilliant researchers,
- [01:21:32.830]they're in all the NIAAA publications,
- [01:21:35.110]they have contributed to our field tremendously
- [01:21:38.450]and it looks like they made a tremendous error
- [01:21:40.972]in this article.
- [01:21:42.240]They did a meta analysis of a bunch of
- [01:21:45.166]evaluations from different alcohol prevention interventions
- [01:21:49.330]on college campuses.
- [01:21:52.490]They found, and really what they found
- [01:21:54.870]is not what's in the articles,
- [01:21:56.320]but let me tell you what they found,
- [01:21:58.410]they found there wasn't a tremendous amount
- [01:22:00.280]of difference and there wasn't a tremendous effect
- [01:22:02.580]in any of them and that effects
- [01:22:05.170]seemed to be stronger for fraternity men.
- [01:22:07.910]And they knew that because they could do
- [01:22:09.580]a meta analysis of all the evaluations
- [01:22:12.720]that looked specifically at fraternity men.
- [01:22:15.820]However, they made the mistake of extending it
- [01:22:18.370]to sorority women even though they did not do
- [01:22:21.330]an analysis of the statistics for sorority women.
- [01:22:24.560]Sorority women got thrown into the pot
- [01:22:26.526]because they were Greek.
- [01:22:28.500]What really is interesting is how the media took it.
- [01:22:34.510]The finding remember was, when we look at these
- [01:22:37.510]individual interventions and the evaluations of them,
- [01:22:41.060]the pre and the post, we don't see that much
- [01:22:44.400]of a significant difference.
- [01:22:46.080]Now there's a whole lot to that finding
- [01:22:48.450]that we already know.
- [01:22:50.090]One, no single intervention works, period,
- [01:22:54.520]I'll tell you right now.
- [01:22:56.050]If you put all your chips in the crashed car, good luck.
- [01:23:00.380]If you put all your chips
- [01:23:01.870]in the college alcohol profile good luck.
- [01:23:06.634]It can't work by itself, you won't see results.
- [01:23:09.910]The big lesson for the University of Nebraska
- [01:23:12.100]that we have spread to the world,
- [01:23:15.676]thanks to Ian's internationalness,
- [01:23:18.670]that a word?
- [01:23:19.690]Is because we learned that you have to
- [01:23:23.640]do it comprehensively.
- [01:23:25.830]You can't do one thing, you've gotta do
- [01:23:27.950]a bunch of things at once.
- [01:23:30.690]It's gotta be surround sound if it's gonna work.
- [01:23:34.730]So the study really didn't tell us much
- [01:23:37.930]cause it just compared a bunch of interventions
- [01:23:40.540]and compared a bunch of populations
- [01:23:42.590]and said basically no one thing works.
- [01:23:44.960]In fact if you read the discussion of the paper
- [01:23:47.570]they ended by saying, oh and this is probably
- [01:23:50.210]why we have to have comprehensive prevention,
- [01:23:52.840]they actually say it in the article,
- [01:23:54.560]they go here's the big point of this.
- [01:23:56.710]But none of that, all of that was lost
- [01:23:59.400]on USA Today, New York Times and the LA Times
- [01:24:03.030]and every paper that published this.
- [01:24:05.580]Frat brothers are immune to alcohol intervention
- [01:24:08.310]programs study suggests.
- [01:24:10.020]Alcohol interventions seem ineffective for frats,
- [01:24:13.659]this was a nice one.
- [01:24:15.400]But this one blew my mind.
- [01:24:19.990]I have students in the room, do I have
- [01:24:22.100]fraternity, sorority members in the room?
- [01:24:24.842]Are you afraid to raise you hand now?
- [01:24:27.160]One.
- [01:24:29.370]How does that make you feel, are you immune?
- [01:24:32.000]Are you like something wrong with you,
- [01:24:35.130]genetically, that you're the ultimate exception
- [01:24:38.230]to the universe and that everyone else
- [01:24:40.270]can take behavioral modification therapy
- [01:24:42.779]but you can't?
- [01:24:45.780]That's not true, have you changed anything
- [01:24:47.240]in the last week, month, year, never?
- [01:24:50.920]Still using the same toothbrush, still brushing
- [01:24:53.110]your hair the same way.
- [01:24:55.261]The concept of being immune to behavior change
- [01:25:00.802]should have us rioting in the streets.
- [01:25:03.926]It's the most ludicrous concept ever.
- [01:25:07.280]It makes me want to do this work (laughs)
- [01:25:11.310]because it puts down our students so much.
- [01:25:15.380]It is such a derogatory concept
- [01:25:18.680]to our students and to Greek students particularly
- [01:25:20.920]who actually have a whole lot of positive things
- [01:25:24.350]that the Greek system offers and the Greek system
- [01:25:26.490]is on trial, let me tell you.
- [01:25:28.560]The North-American Interfraternity Council
- [01:25:30.390]just completely reorganized, cleaned house,
- [01:25:33.630]rebuilt, because there's not a group
- [01:25:37.350]that's under more fire right now.
- [01:25:40.170]And so our concepts here are really critical
- [01:25:43.220]because we tend to think we have to throw this group out.
- [01:25:46.340]This is a cheap and easy way out of responsibility
- [01:25:50.840]to say well they just can't do it,
- [01:25:52.520]they just can't handle it no matter what we do.
- [01:25:55.270]Doesn't quite matter, do you see moms do this
- [01:25:57.130]with three year old that are tantrum oriented.
- [01:25:59.290]I see it all the time, I was just at a dinner
- [01:26:01.420]the other night, this mom was like,
- [01:26:03.380]oh Jimmy, I'm like oh Jimmy give me five minutes
- [01:26:05.770]with oh Jimmy I'll show you oh Jimmy.
- [01:26:09.110]But you know are we just gonna throw up our hands
- [01:26:10.590]and go oh, there's nothing we can do,
- [01:26:11.820]there's nothing we can do.
- [01:26:13.660]This is how it is, this is how it will always be,
- [01:26:15.770]that's what that says to me.
- [01:26:17.980]There's not a piece of science that indicates that,
- [01:26:21.660]not one, there's not a piece of prevention science,
- [01:26:25.400]in fact prevention science, the kind that
- [01:26:27.710]you're gonna see Linda will show you here
- [01:26:29.370]later in the day, this prevention science
- [01:26:32.020]argues the exact opposite.
- [01:26:33.580]It's just that we're not doing right
- [01:26:36.140]and we're not doing it thoroughly
- [01:26:37.430]and we're not doing it well.
- [01:26:39.950]I'm not gonna tell you that Failsafe is the answer
- [01:26:42.270]to this at all, I think it's again a piece of the puzzle
- [01:26:46.060]and I'll talk about, after lunch, what it is,
- [01:26:48.280]how it is, I'll show it to you,
- [01:26:50.070]I'll talk about what we've learned from piloting it
- [01:26:52.120]with a bunch of great groups around the country.
- [01:26:54.520]I'll share all that with you and then
- [01:26:55.660]how I think you might be able to use it,
- [01:26:57.700]really talk about that's the short easy part.
- [01:27:00.830]This is kinda understanding it and why
- [01:27:02.480]it's so important at least in my mind,
- [01:27:04.430]I think its the more important part.
- [01:27:07.360]But I'm gonna tell you that it's just one small
- [01:27:10.304]piece of this but it must be built upon the concept
- [01:27:13.010]that if we really understand who we're working with
- [01:27:15.390]and we understand how they operate
- [01:27:17.300]this is why I went to sociology
- [01:27:18.987]to understand this problem.
- [01:27:21.470]If we understand how the group thinks
- [01:27:24.370]and how social groups think because we are
- [01:27:27.130]social communal beings.
- [01:27:30.260]Membership is one of Maslow's hierarchies of need,
- [01:27:35.003]everyone needs membership.
- [01:27:38.740]It's a natural human drive to belong
- [01:27:42.390]and you, if you think about your memberships,
- [01:27:45.220]have proven yourself worthy in those memberships
- [01:27:49.163]in one form or another, probably not nearly
- [01:27:52.350]as dramatically as these groups, but in one form or another
- [01:27:55.410]so the question becomes, how do we address then
- [01:27:59.470]this group, this Edgework community using their own rules
- [01:28:03.606]and their own way of being in order
- [01:28:06.770]to start to make this happen?
- [01:28:07.960]So before we go to lunch I'm just gonna talk about
- [01:28:10.166]a few issues that are theoretical underpinnings
- [01:28:13.650]of this kind of work.
- [01:28:15.270]And then I'm gonna tie it to actual college prevention work.
- [01:28:17.720]So the first thing you have to understand
- [01:28:19.584]is that student leaders influence student members
- [01:28:21.220]even in Edgework communities, that again
- [01:28:23.520]there is a natural peer influence that occurs.
- [01:28:27.770]Do you know where I learned this?
- [01:28:29.340]Here in Nebraska with this concept.
- [01:28:34.200]When we all worked together, Linda and Linda
- [01:28:36.810]and probably another Linda was involved at some point,
- [01:28:41.380]you had to be named Linda to work here, basically,
- [01:28:44.123]that's why I left,
- [01:28:47.560]created this thing called the New Member Summit,
- [01:28:49.320]let me tell you what it was it was very simple.
- [01:28:51.420]It was bringing in all the brand new members
- [01:28:53.010]who had just bid or had just been recruited
- [01:28:56.090]over the summer, the first week of school
- [01:28:58.020]from the very, very beginning, sitting in small groups
- [01:29:00.730]of eight to 10 people with two older upperclassmen
- [01:29:05.460]also from the Greek system
- [01:29:07.550]and we had very little curriculum, we had curriculum,
- [01:29:12.170]but it was basically what do we want you to talk about
- [01:29:14.080]and we said tell the truth.
- [01:29:16.560]Tell the truth, break as many myths as you can break.
- [01:29:21.355]Tell the truth, we don't drink all the time.
- [01:29:25.860]At Loyola University of Maryland,
- [01:29:29.700]probably one of the most profound conversations
- [01:29:31.730]I ever had with a student leader at breakfast
- [01:29:34.816]in the neighborhood where they filmed Hairspray
- [01:29:37.856]by the way, that was interesting to me,
- [01:29:40.420]probably not to anyone else but it was there,
- [01:29:42.740]the waitress called me hun, so there you go.
- [01:29:46.430]I had a meeting with a student leader
- [01:29:48.680]and I said to this student leader, tell me about
- [01:29:50.670]what you do, what's life like for you?
- [01:29:53.890]And he said, party really heavily Friday, Saturday
- [01:29:56.330]nights, sometimes Thursday night and I said great,
- [01:30:00.090]what's your GPA and he said my GPA is 3.9
- [01:30:02.890]and I said great, I said how do you do it?
- [01:30:06.230]He said I spend all day Friday and Saturday
- [01:30:11.120]in the library.
- [01:30:12.540]I lock myself in the library from 8:00 a.m. Friday
- [01:30:16.326]till 5:00 p.m. and I do the same thing on Saturday.
- [01:30:20.820]I prep everything, I write everything
- [01:30:23.420]so that by the time I'm done I don't have to worry about it
- [01:30:26.920]and I can just get over my hangover
- [01:30:29.210]and I can recover and then I start back up the next week.
- [01:30:32.280]And that's how I party heavily on the weekends.
- [01:30:35.480]So then I asked him this very important question,
- [01:30:37.760]how many of your brothers know that?
- [01:30:41.494]He had to think.
- [01:30:44.230]I don't know if any of them know that.
- [01:30:47.130]He wasn't sneaking to the library but he wasn't
- [01:30:50.350]sharing his secrets of success.
- [01:30:53.094]He wasn't telling his brothers this is how
- [01:30:55.050]I stay from falling off the cliff.
- [01:30:57.910]Here's how I keep my 3.9 and impress you
- [01:31:00.980]and wow you with my social skills on a Friday night
- [01:31:03.210]or Saturday night, here's how I do it.
- [01:31:05.660]He drinks differently on Friday night than by
- [01:31:07.500]Saturday night cause he knows he's gonna be
- [01:31:08.540]in the library all day Saturday.
- [01:31:10.480]He drinks differently, nobody knows it.
- [01:31:14.530]He has a practice that he does to keep him
- [01:31:18.770]from falling off the edge that he's never shared
- [01:31:20.840]with his membership.
- [01:31:23.128]When you share it with your membership you use
- [01:31:25.500]a whole new form of peer influence that no one understands
- [01:31:28.934]because our culture has reinforced this peer influence
- [01:31:32.740]about the risk taking, doing something wild and crazy.
- [01:31:36.470]All of our websites that show the worst of us
- [01:31:38.806]rather than all of our websites talking about,
- [01:31:41.810]so one of the things you're gonna see on Failsafe,
- [01:31:44.430]one of the exercises for each chapter
- [01:31:46.720]or each group is to share secrets of success.
- [01:31:49.928]It's part of changing expectation theory.
- [01:31:52.592]So going back and saying what's the real expectation,
- [01:31:55.650]the expectation is you build skill.
- [01:31:58.930]We can build skill and it doesn't take away
- [01:32:00.600]any cool from you, it doesn't take away cool
- [01:32:02.500]for you to train.
- [01:32:04.070]But I will tell you we have a human tendency
- [01:32:06.110]to sort of think I was born able to do this
- [01:32:08.650]and I wasn't born able to do anything really at all.
- [01:32:12.750]I had to work at it, I had to figure out
- [01:32:14.960]how to do it, right, and the same is true
- [01:32:16.380]for all of us.
- [01:32:17.213]So if we could build that into leader influence,
- [01:32:20.250]the second thing leaders do is they set
- [01:32:21.980]very clear rules of behavior.
- [01:32:23.700]They do enforce behavior and you've seen it,
- [01:32:27.570]you've watched it happen.
- [01:32:28.720]You've seen one leader turn to another one,
- [01:32:30.870]you see members, by the way, look at their leaders
- [01:32:34.450]in certain social events, it's really fascinating
- [01:32:36.590]or who they tell the story in front of
- [01:32:38.430]and how they tell the story.
- [01:32:41.312]So I went around and collected drinking stories
- [01:32:42.950]at fraternities late at night, it was fun
- [01:32:45.880]and one of the, among the many other things
- [01:32:48.197]that I did during my graduate work here,
- [01:32:51.805]and one of the things that I did
- [01:32:53.020]is I would sit them all down casually,
- [01:32:54.520]bring them in, and I'd get the leader to allow me
- [01:32:56.950]to come into the house at 10:30 at night
- [01:32:58.870]cause that's the time everyone was kinda hanging out
- [01:33:00.700]and they would all come around and more would come
- [01:33:03.656]and I'm talking to a group of maybe seven men
- [01:33:06.830]from one fraternity and we're sharing stories,
- [01:33:09.256]cause I just asked them to tell me drinking stories
- [01:33:11.500]and they're sharing stories and they're telling me
- [01:33:13.840]freely all kinds of things and then the chapter leader
- [01:33:16.880]walked in and the stories changed.
- [01:33:20.290]It was fascinating, they didn't get nice,
- [01:33:21.960]they didn't get any better, they got worse (laughs).
- [01:33:25.250]But they changed in nature as well.
- [01:33:27.740]They just changed, they were different stories
- [01:33:30.060]cause there were certain things they knew
- [01:33:31.190]would tick the leader off if they told
- [01:33:34.056]because the leader was concerned about
- [01:33:36.390]the quality of the house.
- [01:33:37.380]The leader knew that they were gonna get
- [01:33:38.730]pounded by alumni if they wrecked the house,
- [01:33:41.350]they knew how much it cost, and so they wouldn't
- [01:33:43.370]talk about that, they were talking about it before,
- [01:33:46.030]breaking things, they stopped talking about
- [01:33:47.480]breaking things and started talking about other things.
- [01:33:50.900]So peer influence exists, it's real
- [01:33:54.910]so we haven't tapped into it yet
- [01:33:56.510]as effectively as we could.
- [01:33:58.934]You're familiar with the College Aim I hope
- [01:34:01.790]and the point I wanna make about this
- [01:34:04.130]is some of the things that we learn from that
- [01:34:05.670]that should also be incorporated
- [01:34:07.090]and was incorporated in Failsafe.
- [01:34:09.280]Adapting individual level strategies for implementation,
- [01:34:11.954]We just applied to student organizations,
- [01:34:14.450]providing turnkey materials for student leaders
- [01:34:17.210]and focusing strategy implementation as a way
- [01:34:19.690]to increase group success not solve a drinking problem
- [01:34:23.540]was particularly important in this case.
- [01:34:26.210]The blue arrows indicate the level of,
- [01:34:29.150]if you are familiar with the Aim,
- [01:34:31.030]you know that it's sort of leveled by amount of research
- [01:34:33.630]and amount of efficacy found in that research
- [01:34:36.492]and so we have categories like higher effectiveness,
- [01:34:39.520]moderate effectiveness, lower effectiveness,
- [01:34:41.390]not effective, too few studies to rate effectiveness
- [01:34:44.060]and then the stars indicate what the level of study was,
- [01:34:49.212]how much it was studied or not.
- [01:34:51.160]So we identified a number of issues
- [01:34:54.640]that were high to moderate effectiveness
- [01:34:57.040]that we can incorporate into one toolkit.
- [01:34:59.260]We kind of said, if I could make a package
- [01:35:02.354]of interventions that I think need to work together,
- [01:35:06.420]complementary, and I think would be a bit
- [01:35:09.260]of a curriculum for an Edgework group,
- [01:35:11.330]what would it look like?
- [01:35:12.620]And so we carefully kind of chose through that.
- [01:35:15.530]Now I have to say to you, the matrix is in two parts,
- [01:35:18.660]individual strategies we just talked about,
- [01:35:21.310]these are all individual level strategies.
- [01:35:23.000]In other words they effect the individual
- [01:35:24.800]and their decision making,
- [01:35:26.890]many of which occur in a group setting,
- [01:35:28.480]don't be confused, but they're individually focused.
- [01:35:32.730]There are no blue arrows anywhere on the environmental
- [01:35:35.656]and I'm gonna make the point again,
- [01:35:39.133]all of this is necessary if this is going to work.
- [01:35:45.830]And really what the College Aim says
- [01:35:47.390]for the first time very directly
- [01:35:49.730]and what we have to understand as a college
- [01:35:52.080]and university is that if we're going to have these
- [01:35:55.290]we have to have this.
- [01:35:57.240]These two things really work hand in hand
- [01:35:59.640]and I know I've over made that point but I
- [01:36:01.976]just have to keep making it.
- [01:36:03.720]So let's talk about what that means
- [01:36:05.770]in comprehensive prevention.
- [01:36:07.940]Combination of strategies through a comprehensive
- [01:36:09.980]program has the best evidence of success.
- [01:36:12.540]So far what we know is the evidence of success.
- [01:36:16.270]Applying individual level strategies in a managed
- [01:36:19.010]alcohol environment adds significant strength
- [01:36:20.920]to individual strategies, we know this.
- [01:36:24.092]And finally we know that adapting environmental level
- [01:36:26.520]strategies to student led environments
- [01:36:28.890]has promise as long as the larger campus
- [01:36:31.240]employs environmental strategies.
- [01:36:33.954]This is the setting in which Failsafe can work.
- [01:36:37.800]This is the setting that exists here
- [01:36:39.277]and why I'm so excited to bring Failsafe here.
- [01:36:42.136]There are many other places across the country
- [01:36:45.040]that I can't say the same for
- [01:36:47.580]and so as we tried Failsafe, I'll tell you
- [01:36:50.280]about our trial,
- [01:36:52.090]we found that difference.
- [01:36:53.990]So I have to tell you, if you're interested in Failsafe
- [01:36:57.170]please build the nest it has to live in
- [01:37:00.877]because all of prevention depends on it,
- [01:37:03.440]it's a really critical nest.
- [01:37:05.940]Okay, when we come back from lunch
- [01:37:08.360]I'm going to show you the website
- [01:37:10.991]and try to hopefully make some connections
- [01:37:13.700]but I hope this has been sort of a helpful frame
- [01:37:15.896]for the way in which we've learned to think about this
- [01:37:20.051]and there are more applications to be made
- [01:37:22.620]and there's more conclusions to be drawn
- [01:37:25.100]and that's why I'm telling you
- [01:37:27.190]so that we can combine our minds.
- [01:37:29.636]So please keep thinking and keep contributing
- [01:37:32.040]to that, it's not just about Failsafe
- [01:37:34.210]but what else we can do with these understandings.
- [01:37:37.120]Thanks everybody, have a great lunch.
- [01:37:39.135](audience applauds)
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