Editor,
A UNM student just left my office. I spent about 40 minutes with him this afternoon listening as he told me about what he was going through with his heroin addiction. He had 14 days clean and was worried sick that the obsession to use would drive him back to his dealer and another cycle of use, withdrawal and messing up at school.
After our talk, he thanked me and headed over to Student Health and Counseling to see about getting some longer-term help. I was glad I’d convinced him; he’ll find good people and ongoing help there.
While talking to students about their or a friend’s addiction trouble isn’t something that appears in the “mission” statement at COSAP, it’s a regular, even daily, occurrence.
So are the students who walk through the door asking for help with an assignment about alcoholism or for an interview with a public health professional for their University Honors class. I drop whatever I’m doing for those young people; I make it my priority.
Students seek help in a variety of ways and COSAP’s support for them comes in a variety of ways, too — even in the way COSAP conducts a workshop for students who violate the campus alcohol/drug policy, which we try to do with respect and a sense of humor. COSAP works with a wide range of other organizations on and around campus to keep alcohol and other drug abuse from killing the hopes and dreams, and sometimes from taking the very lives of our students.
We work with UNM Athletics, the Dean of Students, SHAC, our Greek community, Residence Life and others to make prevention a shared responsibility and to create the kind of campus that supports student success and well-being.
In Monday’s Daily Lobo, a front-page article by Hunter Riley provided details of the SFRB’s recommendations to President Schmidly for the distribution of student fees. In that article, Michael Thorning informed the readers that the SFRB left only one organization unfunded; the one request receiving no student fee support was The Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention — COSAP.
This was sad news for me. As the author of the proposal and program manager for COSAP, I had spent a lot of limited resources writing that proposal and dealing with the changing picture regarding the hearings that resulted from the disagreements between ASUNM and GPSA.
But what really stunned me was the way Michael Thorning, ASUNM Chief of Staff, explained the decision to leave the program out in the cold. He said that COSAP’s funding “should not come from student fees.” He said, “It was a state initiative that got put on the University and the University put it on the students.” To me, that comment sounds like he, and the SFRB he speaks for, feel that COSAP’s program is something inflicted on students rather than a program to serve students, as it certainly is.
Of course Mr. Thorning amended that absurdity with what seemed to me a somewhat patronizing quip: “It’s a great program with a lot of potential.” I can only say that after 20 years of COSAP’s service to students and 13 years of my own commitment to the program (with very little in the way of student fees asked for in return), that’s one cold shot in the back.
Mr. Thorning did return my call requesting an explanation and said his statements were taken out of context. But words printed and read impact the UNM community’s perceptions; and in this case negatively.
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COSAP was established in 1992 as a result of a legislative imperative, but that fact has nothing to do with the current set of programs provided by COSAP or the services we render to students. Our proposal and our presentation made that perfectly clear, so I cannot imagine what prompted that remark, other than an attempt at an explanation of why all organizations requesting funding could not be provided for.
COSAP would have been pleased to receive a fraction of what was requested and would have put it directly to use in programs for students.
Wouldn’t it be great to have the SFRB accommodate all of the organizations that asked for help? Even if it were at reduced levels to avoid increasing student fees? I think the students we’ve worked with over the years and any others that are in any way familiar with our program would agree with that statement.
As COSAP’s Program Manager, I will ask President Schmidly to reconsider the SFRB’s decision in light of what I feel was a serious mistake in judgment. And in the meantime, my staff of student employees and I at COSAP will continue to work on prevention programs oriented toward providing for student well-being and academic success. As we work for students, I only ask that students and the UNM community to support us in return.
John Steiner
COSAP Program Manager
