Bloomington Normal Community Campus Committee

• Illinois State University: Enrollment 20,856 (18,344 undergraduates and 2,512 graduates)
• Illinois Wesleyan University: Enrollment 2,066
• Heartland Community College: Enrollment 5,257
• Lincoln College Normal: Enrollment 700
• City of Bloomington: 64,808 residents
• Town of Normal: 45,386 residents

Background

The Bloomington Normal Community Campus Committee (BNCCC) originally started in January 2005 as a subcommittee of a larger coalition called the Heartland Coalition for Youth and Families. It focused on training servers of alcoholic beverages and brought the STEPS (Safety Training to Encourage Profitable Services) program to the twin cities of Bloomington and Normal. BNCCC still operates, training those who sell and serve alcoholic beverages to serve responsibly in order to discourage overconsumption and keep alcohol-impaired drivers off the roads.

According to Bobbie Lewis-Sibley, community liaison with the BNCCC, one problem that kept recurring was that youths under age 21 were being served alcohol at local on-premise establishments.

“After looking at the data and speaking with the police, we became concerned about the number of young people who were being served in the bars in Bloomington-Normal. We thought that it would be a great idea to get involved in server training,” said Lewis-Sibley. “Six members of the Heartland Coalition attended a server training and formed the STEPS subcommittee.”

In August 2006 the subcommittee developed into what is now known as the BNCCC. In May 2007 the BNCCC was selected for funding for the Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services for the period July 2007 to June 2010. In June 2007 it adopted as its mission statement: “To reduce high-risk drinking among Bloomington-Normal students.” In 2009 BNCCC received a U.S. Department of Education grant to Prevent High-Risk Drinking or Violent Behavior among College Students, for which Illinois State University is the fiscal agent. In addition, in October 2009 Illinois State University (ISU) received a $15,000 grant to help curb underage drinking on campus from the Illinois Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Other Drug and Violence Prevention (IHEC) for the 2009–2010 Illinois University and College Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU) received a similar grant.

“We are pleased that IHEC is supporting the efforts of the BNCCC and Illinois State to address underage drinking through this grant,” said Senior Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Brent Paterson in a press release announcing the grant. “The BNCCC has been a valuable partnership in addressing underage drinking and alcohol abuse by college students in Bloomington/Normal. . . . It takes a collaborative effort to reduce alcohol abuse and its effects on the community.”

Program Description

The BNCCC makes the community-campus connection in Bloomington-Normal. The members consist of representatives from all four universities and colleges, Normal Police Department, Bloomington Police Department, Project Oz, Student Government Association of ISU, Chestnut Health Systems, BroMenn Regional Medical Center, OSF Medical Center, Bloomington School District 87, Normal School District Unit 5, Normal Town Council, Bloomington City Council, Meredith’s Properties, the McLean County Coroner, the Bloomington Liquor Commission, Neighbors Association of Normal, and the McLean County Sheriff’s Department.

According to the Mid-Year Report on the Prevent High Risk Drinking Among College Students Grant to the U.S. Department of Education (Illinois State University, January 2010), the BNCCC alcohol prevention efforts are well under way. “Evidence of their efforts toward building a prevention coalition and comprehensive strategy for alcohol abuse prevention in the Bloomington and Normal communities builds upon work completed to develop community prevention capacity over the past five years. An ongoing evaluation of the BNCCC prevention efforts is being built upon for the USDE grant evaluation. The BNCCC evaluation has employed multiple methods to describe student alcohol use and related behaviors (Core Survey), examining community environment related to alcohol use by college students (BNCCC Environment Survey), and to understand how the coalition has developed (key stakeholder interviews).”

Community Forums

Between June 1, 2009, and December 31, 2009, the BNCCC conducted four community forums targeting specific groups: ISU students, residents that live around the campuses, property managers, and the community at large. The purpose of the community forums was to identify community standards and values and then to work toward codifying those standards to create a community standards guide.

More than 300 students attended the student alcohol-related forum at ISU. It was both student-designed and student-led. The Student Government Association president led participants in an interactive game called Fact or Fiction that was based on ISU’s Core Alcohol and Drug Survey results. After the game, student table leaders led a 30-minute discussion that also generated questions for a panel of experts, which included a town of Normal police officer, an ISU police officer, housing official, and director of Community Rights and Responsibilities (ISU’s judicial office).

“While ISU staff members were shocked to hear the statistics, the students also didn’t like the negative impact alcohol was having on academics and lifestyle in general. They had a lot of questions for the panel members, which provided good feedback for everybody,” said Lewis-Sibley.

For a community forum at IWU the BNCCC invited residents, parents, students, and community leaders to join them for a public discussion of local data, a police perspective, and a higher education perspective as well as approaches being considered to address overservice, neighborhood parties, and other common problems.

“This forum resulted in more buy-in from the Bloomington City Council and Liquor Commission, including getting a Bloomington Liquor Commission member to join the BNCCC,” said Lewis-Sibley.

For a property managers’ breakfast the BNCCC, along with ISU, invited all Bloomington-Normal property management companies to learn about a new online reporting form for ISU, introduce the BNCCC, and discuss commonalities regarding student accountability.

BNCCC also organized a forum with the Neighbors Association of Normal to discuss quality-of-life issues for community members.

Stakeholder Interviews

On October 15 and October 16, 2009, Andrew F. Wall, project evaluator and assistant professor at the Warner School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, conducted 14 individual interviews with key stakeholders in the BNCCC.

“All those interviewed said that a major success of the BNCCC was the passage of the keg registration ordinance. When we got our state grant, there were 18 other grant sites in Illinois. However, none of them were able to pass a local ordinance. We were unique in the fact that we didn’t just pass one, we passed two identical ordinances in two cities that operate entirely differently,” said Lewis-Sibley.

Most of those interviewed, excluding the students, said that BNCCC fostered new relationships and networking opportunities among individuals at the four institutions and within the community. Members also spoke about the value of the diverse groups of people involved in the BNCCC. They mentioned how working together has helped to strengthen the relationships between college and university and community members, and how these new relationships helped facilitate sharing resources to accomplish common goals. However, those interviewed expressed some concern that the majority of the work was done by 10 percent of those involved. Another concern focused on the potential marginalization of nondominant schools within the BNCCC organization. For example, the larger schools and those with more institutional prestige were more significant voices in the direction of the organization.

As for the future of the BNCCC, members expressed uncertainty about why people participated. For example, was it truly to resolve the problem or in pursuit of prestige? Finally, members questioned the nature of the problem and how to determine success, voicing concerns about the future direction of the BNCCC in the aftermath of having accomplished the goal of passing the keg registration ordinances.

Evaluation

The BNCCC uses both the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey and a Web-based environmental survey to help both understand problems and monitor whether changes are occurring. The Core survey was implemented by the BNCCC in 2008, 2009, and 2010 among students at the four participating campuses. Core survey data from 2009 found that, overall, 55.6 percent of students reported consuming five or more drinks per week. For students under 21 years of age, the data indicated the average number of drinks per week was 6.22. For those 21 to 25 years of age, the average number of drinks rose to 8.01. The highest percentages of negative consequences to drinking were getting into an argument or fight (40 percent) and missing classes (35 percent). The majority of students (82 percent) reported drinking on campus, as opposed to in a bar or restaurant (55 percent), or at a private party (74 percent).

The Web-based environmental survey was designed to expand upon information that the Core survey gathers. In 2009, the Web-based survey was sent to 1,000 randomly selected students at all four campuses. More than three hundred students responded. In addition to information on consumption, the survey asked about location of drinking, how students obtained alcohol, and peer expectations about drinking, among other things. The survey found that for students who were 21 or older, off-campus parties and off-campus bars had a higher rate of inviting heavy drinking, with 30 percent of heavy drinking taking place off campus. Underage students reported obtaining alcohol through individuals who were aged 21 and over. Data regarding peer expectations surrounding alcohol use suggested that peers mostly wanted each other to refrain from heavy drinking and to drink responsibly at parties among themselves and mostly on weekends. However, they also encourage getting drunk on weekends among themselves and having fun. On a positive note, 72.4 percent of student participants agreed that their peers wanted to have fun with them whether or not alcohol was involved.

Lewis-Sibley said that the information from these surveys helped with myth-busting. “For example, a common myth is that all college students drink. Community members viewed all the college students as the problem when it came to drinking. But that’s just not the case.”

Other information that helps BNCCC evaluate its work includes compliance checks by law enforcement to determine if establishments are making alcohol sales to minors.

“At the February 2009 BNCC meeting, the Normal Police Department, which frequently conducts off-premise compliance checks, reported that during February the 31 establishments that were visited had a 100 percent compliance rate. It is impressive. The sheriff’s department is also seeing much higher compliance rates,” said Lewis-Sibley.

Conclusions

The Core survey, environmental survey, and interview themes reveal areas of success and future advancement for the BNCCC prevention efforts. First, the group has been remarkably successful in gaining broad participation from the four participating institutions and the two municipalities. Second, the four institutions have been remarkably successful in collecting annual student alcohol use and related behavior data. The collected data suggest heavy alcohol consumption and negative consequences (compared with national data) and point toward environmental areas for continued efforts. Third, the group has had success in passing new city legislation around keg registration and has a group that values the network and relationships built by the prevention efforts, but needs to have continued goals and definitions of success to maintain individual engagement.

For Lewis-Sibley, the progress that BNCCC has made is very encouraging. “We have between 30 and 35 people at our monthly meetings. In addition, there is a great deal of networking between the members outside of the meetings to share resources and information. For example, the emergency room staff was never involved, but came to the table at our request. They were dealing with alcohol issues in the emergency room and wondering why nobody was doing anything about it. Now they give us data all the time.”

Additional Information

For additional information, visit http://www.bnccc.org/.