Drugs and alcohol are present, but students rarely are caught.
The residence life office handles drug incidents on campus, but information is not taken to provide true statistics of how present drugs are on Cabrini’s campus, the assistant director of residence life at Cabrini said.
Besides alcohol “we do have some incidents with marijuana, but I wouldn’t say that in my four years of being here I’ve seen anyone at Cabrini with anything other than marijuana,” Akirah Massenberg said.
A recent report from National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS) suggests that heroine is the most abused drug in Philadelphia based on 2013 and 2014 data. Cocaine followed second with prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, alcohol and marijuana following as the top most abused drugs in Philadelphia.
A combination of survey results showed that college students tended to abuse drugs, including alcohol more often than those who are not attending college in the same age range.
“I haven’t seen it here at Cabrini, but just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening,” Massenberg said. “I have worked at two larger institutions where Adderall prescription pills were being used by people who were not prescribed, but specifically at Cabrini I have not seen that.”
The National Drug Early Warning System found that alcohol was still held the number one spot for the primary substance of abuse when abusers were admitted into rehabilitation centers in 2014.
According to rehabs.com Pennsylvania has one of the highest rates of arrests related to alcohol on campuses with multiple listings in the top 50 schools.
“Depending on the incident and how it occurs, if a student is caught with drugs then the police may be called right away,” Massenberg said. “They may be documented in an incident report and have to go through a judicial process and meet with the director of residence life or the dean of students.”
Cabrini’s policy allows students over 21 to possess a certain amount of alcohol in their rooms, while the drug policy states that there will be harsh consequences for drug use. West Chester University, which is only 20 miles away from Cabrini, has the fourth highest rate of arrests for drugs and alcohol according to rehabs.com, but their policy states that alcohol is prohibited with similar drug policies to Cabrini’s.
Massenberg has worked in institutions where drug use was much more of an issue, in particular adderall, but she has not encountered issues with that in her position in residence life.
“You can’t monitor things that you can’t see. Marijuana, you can smell that, other drugs don’t have a specific smell to them,” Massenberg said. “Unless someone is blatantly doing it out in the open, I don’t have the ability to search rooms. We don’t just go into someone’s room without information as to why we would be there.”
Just over the weekend a mother and son were caught selling drugs out of their house on the Main Line. According to 6ABC, marijuana was one of the major drugs found and the duo was likely selling to college students in the area.
Residence assistants play a role in handling drug incidents on campus and depending on the substance, complete incident reports or contact professional staff.
“When we go through RA training we do a lot of role playing and during that we really get to experience things that we might experience later during the year,”Krista Mosco, east residence assistant, said.
If any student is struggling with drug or alcohol abuse, the campus won’t turn away from the situation.
“We have counseling available on campus, we also have off-campus site,” Massenberg said. “We don’t have a drug rehabilitation center here on campus, but if students do need to go to rehab we do have the resources to point them in the direction of where they can receive those services.”
