University President Frederick Lawrence released the report of the Ad-hoc Committee on Alcohol and Drug Policy last week, almost a year after then-University President Jehuda Reinharz formed the committee.

The report makes a series of recommendations designed to enhance university policies in a variety of areas and protect students from the negative effects of drug and alcohol use and misuse.

The committee, however, "did not assess the extent of the alcohol and drug use at Brandeis, nor even the effectiveness of the multiple programs that exist to deal with substance misuse," according to the report.

The committee was formed following the weekend of Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010, during which two students were arrested, several were hospitalized due to intoxication and another was found selling fraudulent wristband tickets to the Pachanga dance hosted by the International Club.

Then-President Reinharz—only two months away from handing the reins of the University to current President Lawrence—subsequently sent an email that chastised the behavior of Brandeis students. He then formed an ad-hoc committee on alcohol and drug policy.

Reinharz named Prof. Len Saxe (Heller) chair of the committee. According to his faculty profile, Saxe "focuses on human behavior and social policy" and his "research includes studies of community substance abuse programs and development of Jewish identity."

Saxe said in an interview with the Justice that although he no longer studies issues of substance abuse, he spent two decades studying the topic and it has been a "long-standing interest" of his.

The committee took the last six weeks of the fall 2010 semester to complete its report, said Saxe.

The findings of the report focused on prevention. "As part of this prevention focus, our goal is ‘harm reduction'; that is, what can be done to reduce the number and severity of problems associated with alcohol and drug use," according to the report.

The report is broken into four dimensions "that follow from a model developed by the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention and NIAAA," according to the report.

These four elements are health and safety, treatment, prevention and awareness and environment/culture. Saxe explained that this organization is based on the "best practices" model recommended by the U.S. government.

The six recommendations in the health and safety section focus on ensuring that students are not "afraid" to call BEMCo or University Police "during emergency situations for fear of judicial repercussions."

In the treatment section, "the committee is satisfied that Brandeis offers excellent treatment services for students who are identified as being at-risk for alcohol and drug problems," according to the report.

One of the five recommendations calls for Health Center medical personnel to "consider adding a standard assessment tool for screening individuals for drug and alcohol use during routine annual physical exams and other appropriate encounters," according to the report. For prevention and awareness, the committee recommended that the "emphasis be on proactive alcohol and drug use prevention, rather than a reactive one."

This section of the report also calls for additional resources for prevention, awareness and education and an annual survey to collect data about social norms from students.

The final section of the report, environment and community, contains 13 recommendations that suggest that "more attention be paid to the environment that promotes positive Brandeis values and reduces harmful alcohol and drug use."

Among the recommendations are suggestions to expand weekend social opportunities, enhance student presence at athletics games and increase weekend availability of both the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center and the library to "provide additional options for social gathering."

The report also recommends that the University "consider the relationship of currently unrecognized fraternities and sororities to the student body" and "explore the possibility of serving alcohol at large campus events in a way that models expectations for responsible use."

Graduate students and the Heller School for Social Policy and Management are also mentioned several times in the report. Saxe said that graduate students are an increasingly large population at Brandeis and their needs and interests should be considered as well.

In his role as committee chair, Saxe said it was important to him that the committee "heard as many voices as possible."

"My hope is that the committee, both by pointing to some specific things that can be done and also by putting together this framework, helps everybody enhance what they are doing [and] how they are thinking about it," said Saxe in an interview with the Justice.

Lawrence, in an interview with the Justice, said, "I think the most important thing to me that comes out of the report is that the focus is not punitive but rather the focus is in terms of helping and ... making information available to people. … I think that's the framework."

Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel will be responsible for assessing the report's recommendations and finding ways to implement them.

"The [nature of the] recommendation will [help determine] whether it is an implementation or further exploration of what the next steps might be," said Flagel in a phone interview with the Justice.

Flagel will "examine the committee's recommendations and determine how best to integrate them into the life of the University. In the near future, he will assemble working groups to help him conduct that assessment," wrote Lawrence in a Sept. 27 campuswide email.

Saxe added that the committee was not intended as an investigation of Pachanga. Rather, Pachanga was a stimulus that "simply made faculty, staff and administrators more aware of some of the issues," said Saxe.

"Looking at policies across the board is important to do all the time," added Saxe.