Reflections on Chemical Dependency in a College Setting and Its Intersection with Secondary School Programs

ABSTRACT

For more than 25 years, I served Brown University as Associate Dean with Special Responsibilities in the Area of Chemical Dependency, a long title, but one in which, in those early days, each word had its own political value: the idea of this deanship was without precedent, and questions of turf were a big concern. The status of “associate,” for example, made clear that others of higher rank exercised some authority. (Happily, over the years, my supervision was always supportive, trusting and even distant.) “Special” suggested that my responsibilities did not include medical matters addressed in the Brown Medical School and that still other departments had responsibilities in the alcohol and drug area. “In the area” made clear that my own purview had considerable range—academic affairs, athletics, faculty matters, personnel, student life—and was not merely clinical.

At the outset, few—locally or nationally—were paying attention to alcohol and other drug issues on campus. I was a full professor in Classics and an alumnus familiar to and with my institution. I was also five years sober. Brown had welcomed a new president that year, an experienced college administrator from Minnesota, Howard Swearer, who, eager to create a program to assist alcohol-troubled faculty, initiated the Associate Deanship/Chemical Dependency. This was a quarter-time position with a modest budget; the additional three-quarters involved responsibility for more strictly academic issues, for example, advising, monitoring academic honesty. From the start I broadened Swearer's mandate to include work with members of the staff and especially graduate and undergraduate students, who were to become my most numerous clients. I assumed the Associate Deanship in 1977, retiring in July 2003.

In this presentation I will limit my remarks to interactions with students, and place particular emphasis on the use of alcohol, although other drugs were surely prominent in my work. “Student” here includes both undergraduate and graduate students, individuals of very different ages and of all races and sexual orientations. Most undergraduates matriculated immediately after high school, although some had been away from college for as long as twenty years when they returned to complete degree requirements. I emphasize counseling and leave to one side, for example, bibliotherapy and generally leave unremarked commentary on interactions with other individuals and offices on campus—chaplains, health educators, members of the faculty, psychologists, security officers—with whom I developed networks for information and support.

KEYWORDS:

• Recovery
• faculty
• alcoholism
• students
• support

Acknowledgments

Bruce Donovan, PhD, is Professor of Classics, Emeritus and Associate Dean of the College and Associate Dean for Problems of chemical Dependency (Retired), Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (E-mail: [email protected]).

Remarks delivered at the Annual Conference of the Association of Recovery Schools July 10, 2004—with references and a postscript added for publication, April 2007.