By Sarah Metcalf

Alcohol is known to have a notoriously common presence on college campuses across the nation. Students who violate their campus policies, however, face penalties as sanctioned by their university. Northeastern chooses to offer an online alcohol course called AlcoholEdu.

AlcoholEdu (www.alcoholedu.com) is a two to three hour online course for students who have committed their first violation of the university alcohol policy, according to a sanctions guide provided by the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict (OSSCR). Students also must pass a final examination to successfully complete the course.

The program was first introduced to replace the former alcohol education program, Thinking Responsibly about Alcohol Consumption, in which students sat in on an hour-long class.

“The class was only an hour long, and the feedback we were getting was that students were saying ‘I get nothing out of this,'” said Associate Director of OSCCR Wendy Olson. “The main reason we went to an online course was because it’s private and confidential. If you make a mistake online, no one sees it but you. Also, with it being online, students can devote their full attention to it; walk away and come back if they need to. They can do it from the comfort of their own home.”

Olson said the program was implemented to provide a more interesting and interactive alcohol education program for students.

“Anything we can get out there in a fun way has the possibility to have a positive effect,” she said. “This is more fun than sitting in a classroom with 30 people talking about drinking for 50 minutes. When it’s online, it’s more interactive.”

AlcoholEdu may be viewed as a punishment by Northeastern students, but other colleges, such as the University of Colorado, Florida State, the University of Connecticut and Duke University make an online alcohol education course mandatory for students upon entering their university. According to the Web site that offers AlcoholEdu to universities, OutsidetheClassroom-.com, “AlcoholEdu is a science-based, non-opinionated online course that will teach you about alcohol and its effects on your mind and body. AlcoholEdu doesn’t use pointless scare tactics — it gives you the facts you need to determine the role alcohol may or may not play in your life.”

While there are no current plans to make AlcoholEdu mandatory for all incoming NU freshmen, the idea has been discussed, and there are individual colleges on campus that choose to use it with their freshman class.

“I think it was discussed to make it mandatory, but at our office we were looking more towards offering a better alcohol program, and we didn’t really look into whether or not the university wanted to make it mandatory,” Olson said.

However, not all students believe an online program, mandatory or not, is enough to stop college students from drinking.

“I don’t think anyone who is an offender would change their ways just because of an online sanction,” said Caroline Ducas, a middler civil engineering major.

“I don’t think it should be mandatory for freshmen either because by the time you get to college, you’re going to do what you want, and someone who would act like that isn’t going to change after taking an online course.”

According to the OSSCR pamphlet, sanctions are handed down to try and prevent the student from committing future violations of the Student Code of Conduct and are designed to assist the student in making positive behavioral changes. All sanctions, including AlcoholEdu, are mandatory. If they are not completed within the allotted time span, the student can lose the right to register for classes, or if they are already registered, their classes may be purged.

Olson said she hopes the program will be a pro-active way to inform students who may not know about responsible alcohol consumption.

“I don’t think there’s anything that could hurt with a program like that because where else do we have that discussion with freshmen? The common response of people caught drinking at orientation was ‘this is what we thought you do at college,'” Olson said. “These programs say that, you know, not everyone goes out and gets drunk every Friday night. This could be a pre-emptive, pro-active way to get education out there.”