Student Health Services and the USF Wellness Center will be hosting Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on campus starting at the end of March. The meetings will be held every Wednesday evening at 7 p.m., in the Student Health Services Annex Conference Room, by the bookstore. According to the USF Wellness Facebook page, the weekly meetings will be available for students, faculty or staff of USF to attend.
“Alcoholics Anonymous used to be here on campus, but it disappeared for a while,” said Monica Rousseau, REACH peer educator.
The return of the AA meetings will continue through the end of the semester and summer. The Wellness Center also provides a schedule of all the AA meetings in the Tampa area, which is available on the Wellness Center website.
The return of AA at USF is part of the Watch Your BAC Campaign. According to the Watch Your BAC website, the campaign is part of an effort to educate college students about blood alcohol concentration and health risks involved with drinking. The purpose of the campaign is to inform students about the importance of monitoring the amount they drink.
“The Watch Your BAC Campaign is part of a three year grant and we are on year two,” said Rousseau.
Photo taken by Ivette Virelles
According to Rousseau, part of the campaign is the BAC cards, which are given out to students and personalized to their characteristics. They are designed to help students monitor their own BAC with factors such as gender, weight and amount of drinks on the card. The cards have different color zones, including green, blue and red, which are the different blood alcohol concentration levels. The campaign encourages students to stay in the green numbers of the card and away from the dangerous red numbers said Rousseau. The cards are supposed to help people self-monitor their drinking by calculating the blood alcohol concentration.
“Blackout occurs at 1.5 and alcohol poisoning is definitely a possibility,” said Rousseau. “Death is also a possibility in the red zones.”
Rousseau said students should keep their BAC cards with them at all times because they can be signed up to win prizes and free products at other Wellness Center events. If students see the Wellness Center educators at campus events they can show their BAC cards and be signed up for contests sponsored by the center.
