A lot more Oberlin students may be living in official substance-free housing next year if a new Residential Life and Dining Services initiative is passed.

Staff and students are gauging the level of interest for a proposal that would expand substance-free housing for the 2005-2006 academic year. The hope is that an official proposal will be ready for submission by the end of this semester, ensuring that students will know what options are available to them when the housing selection process begins in March.

Last year, the substance-free residence switched from being a theme hall on the second floor of East to a ResLife-sponsored program house in Barnard. The intention was to accommodate a larger number of students who feared that drug and alcohol activity would be in conflict with their ideas of a comfortable living environment. Only in the months leading up to this school year, however, did ResLife see a greater desire for substance-free housing than it had initially anticipated. They received over 70 applications for the 12 spaces reserved for first-year students and over 80 students showed up on the wait list for the remaining 29 spaces.

In response to this high demand for substance-free living, ResLife is exploring possibilities for either moving the substance-free house to another, larger residential hall or adding a second substance-free facility to exist alongside Barnard.

College senior Graham Bier, the senior resident assistant for Barnard and East Halls, is co-sponsoring an open forum scheduled for Nov. 22 which invites students to voice their thoughts about and preferences for the growing and developing substance-free living option. The forum will also serve to educate students about the program, hopefully dispelling certain myths about the types of students who choose to participate.

“The students who live in substance-free housing want to be healthy,” said Assistant Director for Housing Ehrai Adams. “They don’t like the idea of putting alcohol or tobacco into their bodies, or they have so many allergies that they feel they are at risk in environments that are not smoke-free.

“Another interest people have in this program comes from seeing what addiction can do, and they want no part of that,” Adams continued. “There are students who may be recovering from substance abuse themselves.”

Newly-appointed Interim Director of Housing Molly Tyson expressed the opinion that the substance-free residence should be an option for the students who need it. “In going through the applications for substance-free housing, we want to focus on helping those people who choose this option for more problematic reasons, who want their living environment to serve as a support structure,” she said. “I think that’s one of the areas we can improve and better define in describing our substance-free living program, because I’m not really sure that students always see the other side of why students are choosing this space.”

“The need for substance-free living has been here for a long time, and it has needed to be addressed for a long time,” said Bier, who has been an advocate of the program since the beginning. “I think that now, Oberlin is definitely moving in the right direction in terms of substance abuse education and support.”