Kait Christensen | New Co-Editor

Last week, Resident Life put on an alcohol awareness program in Middle Briscoe called Get RA Wasted. It addressed the issues of safe drinking with students’ Resident Advisors (RAs) in attendance. It was a great opportunity to learn about alcohol in a friendly atmosphere with your friends.

Briscoe Resident Advisor and senior Matt Hudnall, explained what the program was about.

“The Get RA Wasted Program was an alcohol education program. It was basically a way to show our residents that we can have fun and have a party without actual alcohol while being educated about alcohol use and how to calculate your BAC by how many drinks you drink per night to promote safe drinking,” Hudnall said.

Senior Briscoe Resident Advisor Allison Elliott discussed some of the goals the Office of Residence Life sought.

“It was the Office of Residence Life’s goal to have an alcohol related program in each area for the month of October. So, I thought for the suites it’d be good to simulate a party situation and show how to be responsible with alcohol but to have fun with it at the same time,” Elliott said.

Elliott said that the event was very social and fun for those who attended.

“Pretty much it was just a social atmosphere. We just had music playing and drinks and food and people could stop by and sit and chat,” Elliott said.

To make another point about party safety, RA’s walked around the party and slipped something into attendees’ drinks.

“We also had a little more fun and got Skittles, and two of the RA’s, Chelsea and Malarie, to walk around and try to sneak a Skittle into someone’s drink. That means you got roofied so it was just kind of fun to be like you shouldn’t set your drink down or you shouldn’t talk to people you don’t know,” Hudnall said.

There was a great attendance for the Get RA Wasted Program.

“We had thirty-five residents by themselves, not including the residents themselves or Emili Vondrak (Residence Hall Director of the Suites and Swope Hall),” Hudnall said. I felt like it went pretty well. At the time when I was there, I’d say we probably had like twenty-eight people there, so that’s obviously more in a room than you are supposed to have for a non-registered party, but since it was an RA program, it was not that big of a deal.”

The program is travelling through the residence halls and may come back to the suites in the future.

“We did it last year in Grand and Liberty and brought it to the suites this year and so maybe it will like travel throughout the different areas,” Elliot said.

Photos by Kaitlyn Christensen
[nivoslider id=”6345″]