Lacking a student coordinator, the campus addiction support group will not meet during the spring semester

By Kelsey Roy

Students Off Booze Enjoying Recovery, an addiction support student group known by the acronym S.O.B.E.R., will not be meeting for the spring 2018 semester, according to its Boynton Health Service webpage.

“The group doesn’t run without a student coordinator,” Dave Golden, Boynton’s director of public health and communications, said.

The group was founded back in the mid 1990s, Golden said, to give students recovering from drug or alcohol addiction more social support. The main purpose was to create a community for recovering students that could connect them initially and support their path through the university.

“Regular campus events would be hard for people in recovery,” Golden said, citing alcohol use at college social events and in housing as a main problem.

Through the years, the group has usually met weekly, but it has been up to the student coordinator, a paid position, to make social events for those in the group, Golden said.

“They would go to Goldy’s Game Room, and we would fund them to go to Twins Games,” Golden said. “One big thing they did was a Thanksgiving dinner every year.”  

Although never intended to be a therapy group, S.O.B.E.R. has provided group therapy sessions for the students involved led by therapists from Boynton’s Alcohol and Chemical Health Services division of its Mental Health Services, Golden said.

Julie Sanem, Boynton’s director of health promotion and the group’s advisor, said that last semester’s coordinator quit at the end of the fall semester and low attendance numbers kept them from filling the position this spring. The group has ranged anywhere from 1 to 10 people through her time advising the group, Sanem said.

“We usually pull from the existing pool of students for the next coordinator so that we know the person is dedicated to the group,” Sanem said. “The pool of students didn’t exist this semester.”

Normally, Sanem said, she is aware of the schedule of the student coordinator, including study abroad breaks or graduation dates, but the last-minute resignation of last semester’s coordinator left the group without one for the first time since the group’s inception.

“We didn’t want to rush, so we are taking time to reassess,” Sanem said. In an effort to try to keep the group running, Sanem put a posting for the position on social media, but has not heard anything so far.

But Golden said he is optimistic, despite the lack of interest in the coordinator position for the spring.

“We will be back in the fall,” Golden said.