Red Cup Q&A at OU initiative to educate students on alcohol consumption in ‘approachable, non-stigmatized space’
By Mikaela DeLeon, news reporter
June 15, 2021
The OU Southwest Prevention Center created an educational organization to inform college students about alcohol use.
Charlene Shreder, a program administrator at the Southwest Prevention Center, modeled the Red Cup Q&A at OU after the Red Cup Q&A campaign at the University of Arizona. Shreder said she saw the effectiveness of the Q&A campaign over five years ago and worked with their health services to bring the Red Cup concept to OU.
Shreder partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, whose goal is to “reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.” OU’s campaign will raise awareness about alcohol use and spread information that allows students to understand the dangers of alcohol and ways they can be a part of a community-wide solution, Shreder said.
“We want to provide a platform where students can reach out with questions that they might have and an easy way for them to get the answers that they need,” Shreder said.
Chloe Sanders, a program administrator for the Southwest Prevention Center and Red Cup Q&A at OU, said the campaign plans to host Q&As on their Instagram and intends to host student-led support groups every other Wednesday at the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work.
“The tone that we take is educational and really wants to be informative because I think that college students want to make good choices for themselves,” Sanders said. “By the time that you’re in that phase of your life, you’re making decisions based on your own research, and so I think that’s the type of tone that we want to take with it.”
The Red Cup Q&A at OU hopes to be an approachable, non-stigmatized space for students to turn to when they need support or education about alcohol and other issues they might be facing related to mental health or opioid usage.
“It’s just a place where students can be encouraged to be a community and get support, and we see that as prevention as well,” Sanders said. “It would be great if people were able to access that kind of resources before something came to a crisis.”
Both Shreder and Sanders said they believe the Red Cup Q&A at OU has a wealth of resources directed toward prevention education, and the program will overall help to educate and inform the OU student body.
“As students come back, we’re going to see some increases, as well, because nationwide we’ve seen an increase in drug and opioid use,” Shreder said. “So we’re hoping that these extra initiatives that our project does, as well as other departments within the university, will help us to tackle this.”