Valentine’s Day typically celebrates romantic love. The Office of Student Conduct urges students to pay attention to loving themselves by choosing to live drug-free.
The office set up a table outside of the Student Union, where student workers stood offering free Valentine’s Day-themed lollipops and pamphlets with information regarding the effects of drug use in the United States.
“[When students approach us] we give them a pamphlet that explains statistics about drugs,” said Shaquana Smith, social work major and one of the students working the table. “And then we take a picture of them to go on our website.”
The campaign is being utilized by Student Conduct as a means to spreading awareness, not only of drug-related information, but of the function of the office itself.
“Part of this is for our outreach for Student Conduct,” said Antoinette Alack, director of the Office of Student Conduct. “We want to be more out there; we want to be more proactive than reactive, mostly with primary prevention.”
According to Alack, there has been a noticeable increase of marijuana use amongst college students. The prime reasoning for this seems to be the laxing of marijuana usage laws in other states such as Colorado.
“I noticed a rise in marijuana cases within the fall semester,” said Alack. “Possibly that could be with the lax of laws in states like Colorado that are legalizing it; however, Louisiana is still a state where it’s illegal to use or possess marijuana. It’s also a violation of our code of conduct, violation No. 6. We want to inform our campus community that we’re there if you need to report an incident and make them aware that we do have a policy against drugs. We need to keep [such incidents] from happening.”
Student Conduct received some help from the National Institute of Health for their campaign started in October 2014. Aid came mostly in the form of information exchange.
“We contacted the National Institute of Health and they do a lot of free campaigning,” said Alack. “We received a lot of materials from them to pass out. We also thought the name of the campaign, ‘Love Yourself, Be Drug-Free,’ would tie in nicely with Valentine’s week.”
For more information on the affairs of the Office of Student Conduct, visit their office in Mims Hall or contact the office at 985-549-2213.