Connect with Others
"The excellent part of the SAFER interventions is that they promote ongoing communication and collaboration between campus and community. It expands our collaboration beyond crisis-to-crisis meetings. It's a way of working together that is more proactive than reactive. That is really useful in building positive working relationships."
- Martin Bragg, director, Health & Counseling Services, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

Mobilizing for Action
The success of Safer California Universities resulted from a combination of well-chosen, evidence-based universal prevention strategies and the ability to translate concepts into concrete actions. The ability those on campus and in surrounding communities concerned with high-risk drinking and associated harms to do so depended on their training, experience and skill in mobilizing both campus and community stakeholders.

Lupe Samaniego-Kraus, ATOD Coordinator, University of California, describes how the SAFER program helped develop collaborative working arrangement on and off campus.

Connecting with Others

Allies, from on and off campus, help achieve prevention objectives. While coalitions or task forces are not outcomes, in and of themselves, enlisting the right key stakeholders is an essential step in reducing harms associated high-risk drinking at off-campus parties and in licensed premises. It is not about getting everyone to the table, but rather getting the right people who are ready to commit and take action. The significant reductions in incidence and likelihood of intoxication at off-campus parties and in bars and restaurants observed for SAFER intervention campuses, compared to controls, could not have been achieved without the willingness of campus and community partners to commit to the interventions.

Recruiting Stakeholders and Allies
Experiences from the SAFER California Universities research project demonstrated useful ways for recruiting key stakeholders to be a part of effective interventions to reduce high-risk drinking in selected settings.

• Recruit stakeholders strategically. Campuses often bring together coalitions or task forces too soon as a first step. But membership recruitment should be very thoughtful and include those with a stake in solving the problem and a commitment to making changes. Rather than including an arbitrary list of important people who may ultimately be obstacles to action, communities can get the job done in a number of different ways by being selective and bring the right people to the table. The idea is to come up with the most effective and efficient way to implementation the evidence-based interventions with a track record for reducing problems. No matter what the action group is called, the necessary work needs to be divided among people who know how to get things done.
• Who are potential allies? The ultimate right choice of stakeholders and allies needs, of course, to reflect the specific problems, needs and culture of the campus and community. However, the SAFER interventions aim is to reduce alcohol-related harm associated with off-campus drinking venues, it is likely you will want help from:

  1. Law Enforcement. SAFER California campuses met initially with campus and community police (public safety) agencies, those to be involved in visibility efforts and those to be involved significantly with planning enforcement operations (DUI enforcement; decoy operations; party patrols). Ideally, you can enlist the two respective chiefs of police (although a senior municipal police department officer may be more feasible if your campus is situated in a large city, home to multiple campuses and many competing demands on the limited time of the chief). Visible participation by a senior campus official as an internal advocate to represent university support for the project may facilitate consensus with the police departments (who may want to see university support before they commit to anything).
  
  Police chiefs may take part at the beginning and then defer to another senior officer with operational responsibilities as you move into the implementation phase. Several SAFER California campuses also involved the district administrator of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control which shares enforcement responsibilities, with local jurisdictions, for alcohol sales and services laws.
  

2. Neighborhood association and municipal government. SAFER interventions focus on problems off-campus. The motivation for undertaking these interventions is to prevent unruly and disruptive off-campus parties, reduce the harms associated with high-risk drinking at these events, as well as respond to the concerns of disgruntled and angry community residents. Residents of student neighborhoods and the municipal officials who represent and service them, including police responding to call for service, are important stakeholders.

Your campus may already have ongoing town-gown relationships with neighborhood groups and local officials. Take advantage of these existing relationships and engage these stakeholders in planning your interventions. If not, start with the city manager's or mayor's office for local government connections. In the unlikely event that they're not already known, you can identify neighborhood associations from local newspapers or via Web search.

A number of SAFER California campuses pursue good neighbor policies and provided guidance to students regarding neighborhood organizations, party etiquette and applicable laws. For example, UC Santa Cruz distributes Good Neighbor Guidelines to students. UC Berkeley posts a Healthy Neighborhoods guide on its Student Health Services Web site.

3. Beverage retailers. The SAFERCalifornia Universities research component documented significantly greater reductions in the incidence and likelihood of student intoxication at off-campus licensed premises, such as bars and restaurants, at the intervention universities. Many communities have found that business owners, including businesses which sell and serve alcohol, want to be involved in the prevention of DUI and sales to underage students. Existing tavern owner alliances, restaurant associations and responsible hosting/beverage councils can be allies.

4. Campus-based personnel. A campus coordinator is essential. The success of SAFER California Universities resulted from a combination of well-chosen, evidence-based universal prevention strategies, but it was dependent also on the ability of campus prevention coordinators to translate the concept into concrete action. A major challenge is to maintain on and off campus focus and to coordinate resources within a specific time frame, responsibilities performed by the coordinator supported by campus and community stakeholders. For SAFER Californiacampuses, the coordinator's home base was student health services; he or she was often the existing alcohol/other drug program manager.

Visible participation by a senior campus official can be an internal advocate to represent university support for the project. SAFER campuses typically sought out stakeholders who related to students regarding leisure activities and disciplinary consequences, such as police/public safety, judicial affairs, residential life, and Greek life.