Campaign focuses on awareness
Choose to be responsible, free, challenged, content, confident, focused, peaceful, satisfied, secure, rewarded, proud, successful, important, gratified, capable, a friend, happy, independent and unique.
The Choose to Be campaign is sponsored by the Student Wellness Center at Utah State University, said Jana Carling, prevention specialist at the Student Wellness Center.
Students may have noticed chalk writing on the ground and fliers posted with the simple words “Choose to be.”
Carling said the purpose of the fliers was to get people thinking.
“This is a campaign to let students know that a majority of students use alcohol responsibly,” she said.
Carling defined using alcohol responsibly by applying the Zero-1-3 model. Zero stands for not drinking at all if a person is chemically dependent on either medicine or drugs, pregnant, under age or chooses not to drink. The second part of the model, 1, refers to drinking only one drink each hour.
Carling said a drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 6 ounces of wine or 1 ounce of hard liquor. The third part of the model, 3, refers to having no more than three drinks in one sitting and never drinking every day.
Carling said according to surveys taken during Spring of 2000 and 2001, students believe other students use more alcohol and use it more irresponsibly than they really are.
“At USU, 82 percent of students drink responsibly or not at all,” Carling said. “That compares with 66 percent of students nationally.”
She said most students come to college and want to fit in with a majority group.
“One of the majority groups [at USU] students can join is the group of students who drink responsibly,” Carling said.
USU isn’t alone in running a campaign of this nature. She said a majority of schools run similar campaigns in order to encourage students to be responsible drinkers. When perceptions become more tuned in to real behavior, students realize they don’t have to drink irresponsibly to fit in. People are seen to change their behavior and drink responsibly, Carling said.
“When you choose, you’re choosing freedom and independence,” Carling said.