Housing a key component to campus recovery programs

The most successful collegiate recovery programs include housing dedicated to students in recovery.

By Lemika Fondren

Across Riverside Drive at Augsburg University, around 100 students live together in recovery dorm housing as part of a recovery program from substance use called StepUP.

We’ve all had troubled pasts through struggling with addiction, and there is a sense of calm throughout the building,” said Sam Gunnarson, a student in recovery at Augsburg.

There are three floors of students who are sober, or should be, and you never know whom you might run into on the way to class. There is a sense of camaraderie within the community, an unspoken understanding of one another that’s easy to feel if you are a part of it.

Each week students are required to meet with a counselor for about a half hour to discuss their progress in the program, active steps they are taking to treat their addiction and life in general. There’s a drug test once a semester and weekly group meetings to plan community service activities.

With all the resources available to Augsburg students, Gunnarson said the best resource to him is faculty support and understanding of addiction and mental health.

“They are aware that anxiety plagues a lot of kids,” Gunnarson said. “Because of this, they are willing to chat with counselors and StepUP students and accommodate to fit the best possible solution to a student’s troubles on campus.”

The University of Minnesota has over 30 Living Learning Communities, which are designated parts of a residence hall based around a special interest, but none exist to accommodate those who want a recovery community.

It’s not for total lack of trying on the university’s part.

In the spring of 2014, staff from Boynton Health and students from the S.O.B.E.R. — Students Off Booze Enjoying Recovery — club approached university housing about creating a recovery dorm.

“We thought this was a good idea and would help and be good for the students,” said David Golden, director of public health and communications at Boynton Health.

Later that fall, a recovery dorm housing option was offered to students, but not a single person signed up.

“Unfortunately, we just did not have students apply for the house,” said Kristie Feist, assistant director of Housing and Residential Life.

Currently, recovery dorms at colleges and universities are not the norm. The only colleges in Minnesota to offer housing exclusively for students in recovery are St. Cloud State University and Augsburg.

“Most don’t have residency,” said Patrice Salmeri, former president of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education.  

Being able to come home to a safe space and living with others who are like-minded are just a couple of the reasons why it’s important for colleges and universities to offer recovery housing.

Salmeri says the lifelong bonds students form with one another can give them a leg up in battling their addiction.

“I think having a residence hall really enhances the program,” Salmeri said. “It makes for a lot easier recovery, I think, when you’re around people in a similar spot as you are.”

University of Minnesota students agree.

According to a survey conducted by AccessU: Addiction, to which more than 700 University of Minnesota Twin Cities undergraduate students responded, students listed recovery housing as one option the university should provide for its students.  

“I think a university-sponsored group for people trying to find living with other students trying to stay sober might be useful,” one survey respondent wrote. The questionnaire did not ask students to identify themselves.

But at the University of Minnesota, the only option is a substance-free floor in Middlebrook. Technically, all dorms are substance free, but in this dorm, students are expected to completely abstain from drug and alcohol use.

“I think it’s important to have the LLC to have place where there isn’t pressure to have to do substances to have fun,” said Maria Sottile, a community advisor in the substance free LLC. “Especially in the culture we have in college where people feel the need to drink to have fun.”

Sottile said she chooses to abstain from substance use because she wants to focus on her career, and most of her residents choose to live in substance-free housing because they want to live a healthier lifestyle that doesn’t involve drugs or alcohol.

Feist agrees that abstinence may not be enough for students who require more of a community to help them with their addiction.

I realized that students in recovery are in a very different place and a very different journey than students that have always chosen to abstain from substance,” Feist said.

Feist said it can be hard for students who have always chosen to renounce drug use to understand the trials and tribulations that students in recovery are faced with.

“It just feels very different when you’ve never used a substance versus, ‘I’ve used a substance and it wasn’t healthy for me, and I’ve chosen not to anymore,’” Feist said.

Feist said she is unsure what Boynton or university housing could have done differently to better market the recovery housing option to students.

LLCs are marketed on the university housing’s website and are also a section on the application that all students applying for residency for the next year can see.

“We also work with admissions to make sure their staff is aware of the options for when they meet with prospective students,” Feist said.

Other schools with successful recovery dorms do far more than the mere listing on the housing application, however.

At Augsburg, the StepUP program built a reputation in Minnesota that allowed it to make connections at treatment centers, sober houses and halfway houses, but it still promotes the program on all fronts to get the word out.

“We have stories in the student newspaper, we make flyers and posters,” Salmeri said. “There’s a student group which includes general population students and StepUP students. They hold events and activities.”

Salmeri suggests the university should use September, which is recovery month, as a way to get the word out about resources: “They could have events, have talks with students about what recovery is. They could even partner with Augsburg. We could have cookouts.”

Part of the problem may also be the nature of the university’s housing system. Housing has always prioritized first-year students, and many students who come in with recovery needs are not the type of students who sign up for dorm.

According to Housing and Residential Life, over 70 percent of housing went to first-year students, 3 percent to second-year, a little over 7 percent to third- and fourth-year and 5 percent to transfer students.

With no housing in the works, a potential option for the university could be funding through private donations. “We’ve never perused the private funding,” Golden said. “It’s out of our skill set, but it needs to be looked at,” Golden said.

What sober housing at the university may well need is an advocate outside the university. Nassise Geleta, a second-year student and advocate behind the Charlotte’s Home for Black Women Living Learning Community, says strong leadership is usually the driving force behind the creation of any LLC.

When she formed her own community, for example, Geleta says she had to reach out to multiple departments to get them to fund and advise the Living Learning Community.

“In the beginning, it was just a lot of asking questions with faculty, staff, and student groups. Just whoever was willing to talk about the issue,” Geleta said. “I would talk to people in the Huntley House living learning community, see what their experience has been, what their viewpoints were.”

After finding a department to collaborate with, her focus turned to figuring out what the best way would be to show the university the LLC was necessary.    

She reached out to Black Motivated Women, a student group, and asked to use its sign-in sheets as a way to see if students wanted the LLC. “So then there’s evidence like ‘Look! There’s that many people who want to see it happen!’” Geleta said.

Geleta offers advice to students looking to start their own community: “I would reach out to student groups,” Geleta said. “By talking to as many people as you can, you can gauge where their interest level is.”