The Sober Society

When Danny Yu, SEAS '09, and a group of six other students got tired of dealing with drunken roommates and lingering aromas of pot in the hallway, they came together to form Students for Substance Free Space, a new special interest living community housed in McBain Hall that is designed to eliminate substance use within the dormitory.

"I wanted a better place to live, and more important, better people to live with," Yu said. "I wanted more rules and regulations as to what you can do and can't do."

Yu said that one improvement that substance-free housing brought to his living situation was fewer conflicts between him and his suitemates. While Yu said he disliked confronting people over their lifestyle choices, he said that last year's conditions left him with no choice. "It's not really my business, but if it affects the way I feel, I feel obliged to do that," he said. "So there's certainly a lot less tension here."

Yu said he felt that residential assistants in first-year housing did not do enough to ensure a substance-free environment for students who wanted it. "I'm sure a lot of RAs don't use their authority and responsibility to enforce the rules that are in place," he said.

"We definitely try to enforce it as much as possible, but it's so difficult because there's generally only one RA on duty per week," said a Columbia RA for first-years who was granted anonymity in light of an order restricting RAs from speaking to Spectator. "Unless there's someone constantly circulating through the halls all night, it'll be possible to track down everyone."

Evelyn Ting, CC '09, said that the decision to live in the Students for Substance Free Space community did not necessarily reflect a commitment to living substance-free, but rather a desire for a particular atmosphere. "It's not necessarily a lifestyle choice, but maybe just eliminating problems that can arise with drinking and smoking," she said.

While all first-year housing for Columbia and Barnard undergraduates is officially substance-free, Barnard offers an additional option. The wellness floor on Sulzberger Hall's fifth floor is for first-years who want a living space that emphasizes health.

Both residents of Students for Substance Free Space and the wellness floor emphasized that the substance-free rule was, as a result of the students' decision to live there, self-enforced.

"People who asked to be on our floor, who wanted to be on the wellness floor, really had no interest in participating in any use of substances," said Sophie Soares, BC '09, who lived on the wellness floor last year. "Besides being in theory a substance-free floor, we really followed through on it."

Soares added that while those living in a substance-free environment cared strongly about the atmosphere, they didn't necessarily extend that belief to their lives. "Substance-free to me means that no one in the hall, literally in the hall or in the room, is using anything," she said. "What they do outside the hall is their own business."

Nathalie Celcis, BC '09 and another former resident of the wellness floor, said that substance use did at times take place on the wellness floor. "Every once in a while there were certain telling odors emitting from certain rooms," she said. "The policy on the wellness floor was that you couldn't even appear to be under the influence or intoxicated in any way," she added. "Sometimes girls would come back and clearly be intoxicated."

Celcis said that while she thought the wellness floor's atmosphere was maintained, it was unrealistic to expect that no amount of substance use would occur. "The overall integrity of being a wellness floor was kept intact, but there are going to be a few incidents," she said. "I mean, it's college."