My son is very much against drinking & drugs and is thinking about substance free housing as a way to make some party schools an acceptable alternative for him. It will be his choice and I have no axe to grind on the subject.
Substance free dorms sound like a great concept…I’m curious to hear what parents (& your DSs and DDs) think of the reality of substance free dorms. Are they just window dressing for parents or do they really operate as advertised? If you had a child in one, what were the lessons learned? Are there unintended consequences with these dorms?
Anecdotally, I’ve heard both good and bad. The good is that it’s a collection of many kids who want to eschew the weed smoke and Sunday morning vomit – as intended.
But sometimes families insert kids w/prior addiction issues into the mix, in hopes of shielding them, but the underlying problems still emerge – causing issues. But I suppose that can occur in any housing scenario.
The one at my undergrad was populated by students whose parents required them to be in there and they had no intention of being substance free.
Fwiw, I was in a residential college dorm at a huge party school and didn’t do drugs and rarely drank. It wasn’t a big deal and I was always able to find people to hang out with who weren’t partying.
My S did not drink at all when he started college. He was in a substance free dorm at Fordham for his freshman year and a wellness hall for his sophomore year. Overall, I’d say that the substance free dorm/hall experience was a huge plus for him. Yes, some kids in the dorms did drink and stuff (and yes my S did learn to have the occasional beer etc.), but there were plenty of kids who did not. The dorms (especially his freshman dorm) also had more dorm-related activities than many other dorms on campus which was also a plus. I really think his living arrangements helped him to adjust to college life and find like-minded friends.
At Fordham there were no “unintended consequences” to being in the wellness dorm as the freshman dorm was considered to be one of the really nice places to live on campus (which is why some people who didn’t really want a wellness environment went into the dorm) and sophomore year it was just a hallway or two in a larger, very nice dorm so there was no issue. At some schools there may be a social stigma to being in a wellness dorm, but we only saw positives with my S’s experience. It is a question you could ask tour guides or students you know who are at the different colleges you are looking at.
you and your child should not be shocked to find that many people in the “substance free” dorm are not really substance free…and as others have pointed out a lot are there because mom and pops made them.
And you should know upfront that some sub-free dorms attract the campus drug dealer (often not a user himself) who doesn’t need to go out on a rainy night if his customers live down the hall.
My son has had a positive experience so far in his sub free dorm. He is a freshman so it is early days yet. At his school, sub free doesn’t mean that all of the residents do not imbibe, only that no alcohol/drugs/tobacco can be in the room. So even though a couple of his roommates do go out to party and drink, there are no parties in his dorm, which was what he was after in the first place.
My son is in a ‘dry’ fraternity. I use quotes because we all know dry doesn’t men’s the guys don’t drink. It does mean that alcohol is not the center of their lives. His fraternity requires alcohol free housing. My son liked alcohol free housing because there weren’t drunk guys disrupting the others at all hours. As others have said the meaning of substance free varies. In my sons case it meant no alcohol in the house, not no alcohol ever.
My son is on a substance-free hall, his choice. From what I can see it is not window dressing. He’s happy there and gets along with his hallmates. I would not expect success with a student forced by a parent into substance-free housing and doesn’t want to be there.
S lived all 4 years in sub-free at Grinnell (some of the newest and nicest dorms on campus, not coincidentally). It wasn’t that no one drank or smoked ever, but the understanding was that if you partook, you did it somewhere else and you didn’t show up back in your dorm so intoxicated that others were inconvenienced. The best part was that it was easy to meet others who didn’t socialize around intoxicants (except cookie dough) and as other said, there were lots of dorm activities planned that didn’t involve drinking or smoking. If there were students there whose parents were forcing them to live in the dorm, he didn’t know about it - people were respectful of the rules for the most part. And he had lots of friends in other dorms, so it didn’t isolate him in any way.
The primary drawback is that by removing those ‘non-partaking’ kids from the ‘regular dorms,’ it means the ones remaining don’t have as many kids ‘like them’ in those dorms and fewer people around to put the brakes on those parties. D was furious at her freshman room-mate whom she ‘babysat’ until 3am because the girl was dangerously drunk. The next day, room-mate couldn’t remember a thing, including the public sex - but at least she was prevented from driving off with equally drunk bf.