Editor,
In the May 28-June 2 edition of the Daily Lobo, columnist Devon Stevens took a heavy-handed swipe at the “Fun in the 505” booklet produced by the student employees of the Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention: COSAP.
Throughout his surgical dissection of “Fun,” the author allows no detail to escape his derisive, lecturing criticism, and thereby utterly misses the point of the booklet, which is to suggest that there is plenty to do in and around Albuquerque, and that some of those things might offer an alternative to drinking because there’s “nothing else to do.”
Stevens claims that upon discovering the COSAP booklet, he perused it only to find it lacking in nearly every aspect, from layout and design to statistical accuracy and even sentence construction.
Perhaps most egregious, though, is his assertion that the contents of “Fun” imply that COSAP considers college students dumb, as evidenced by grave and misleading statistical violations that involve daring to round survey results to the nearest whole number, along with using “dated” euphemisms (all tested via valid qualitative research methods) and daring to suggest that playing games and reading might be better ways to spend time than drinking.
By the tone of his column, Stevens seems to imply that the booklet came directly from the basement of Scholes Hall, where a group of evil administrators have plotted to poison the minds of students and rob them of all party fun by devising a fiendish publication.
Could anyone possibly be more out of touch with his own peers?
This booklet was written almost wholly by UNM students.
At COSAP, students and staff (six students, two staff) are always open to criticism. In fact, well before the release of the booklet nearly a year ago, COSAP conducted a number of interviews and focus groups with UNM students to be sure the content, art and layout were relevant, readable and useful.
Stevens’ column lacked any such balance. COSAP’s staff, as well as a number of students and staff from other departments, felt his column to be a mean-spirited, paranoid, un-researched, inane and utterly useless waste of time. Over the years, the COSAP staff has pretty much gotten used to shabby, inaccurate and biased treatment by Daily Lobo columnists. We’ll let our reputation with the majority of fun-loving Lobos stand on its merits.
The “Fun in the 505” booklet has been praised by nearly every student who volunteered an opinion or critically examined it in the focus groups we conduct to ensure that it carries no “stuffed shirt” preaching or overly dated references. COSAP’s efforts over the years have often been praised, at other times perhaps ignored, but never before have we seen such an impassioned and negative response to anything we’ve done.
So for any future endeavors of this kind, we suggest Stevens first visit COSAP in Mesa Vista Hall, where he’d likely find a group of four to six student employees happily engaged in a variety of media and other communicative efforts to encourage Lobos to party safe, have a good time and watch out for each other.
He might also learn that our research statistics of Lobos engaged in positive behaviors related to moderate drinking are well communicated to students by terms such as “nearly 80% of UNM students drink from zero to three drinks per week,” rather than boring our audience to death with decimal-point precision.
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To suggest that we are using weasel words to smear the survey results is incomprehensible to anyone other than students who dwell on minutia to the degree that Stevens apparently does. The many Lobos on whom we test these messages seem to get the point.
We’re also sorry to hear about Stevens’ late grandfather’s alcoholism, but nearly everyone has a sad tale to tell of a family member’s troubles with alcohol or drugs. Having an alcoholic family member doesn’t make one an expert in preventing alcohol-related harm to college students.
The college drinking statistics Stevens provided in his article are also erroneous. The annualized number of deaths for college students in alcohol-related accidents has been estimated to be 1,825, not 36. You expect better from COSAP in the future, Stevens? We expect more professional journalism from you and your colleagues at the Daily Lobo right now.
As a final thought, we suggest Stevens might benefit by endeavoring to have some “Fun in the 505” instead of wasting his time in mean-spirited, boring and pointless criticism of what is meant to be merely a light-hearted list of fun things for students to do. In fact, COSAP’s new version, “Fun in the 505 Vol. II”, has been sent out for printing and will be available campuswide very soon.
COSAP staff and students are willing to let this insulting rubbish lie and to meet at any time with a Daily Lobo writer who wishes to do a more thoughtful analysis of our many efforts aimed at encouraging good decision making by students where alcohol and other drugs are concerned. In the mean time, lighten up Stevens.
Life is just too short.
The students and staff of the UNM Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention
John Steiner, MPH, Program Manager
