Post by IU Communications colleague Milana Katic:
OASIS director Jackie Daniels counsels an IU student in recovery.
Did you know an estimated 500 students on the Indiana University Bloomington campus identify themselves as being in recovery from substance abuse?
Maybe you didn’t know, but fortunately OASIS does.
OASIS is IU Bloomington’s campus-wide alcohol and drug prevention, education, intervention and counseling service. Since 2012, OASIS has dedicated its services to helping students in need of any type of support related to substance abuse.
OASIS director Jackie Daniels says it’s the program’s clear commitment to students that sets it aside from other counseling services provided by the university.
“There is a lot of counseling support at IU, but students want multiple avenues of support,” Daniels said. “On campus, what was really missing was an active network of students supporting each other in their recovery, so we’re trying to widen that avenue by finding other people who can help.”
Part of that help came in the form of a $10,000 grant from Transforming Youth Recovery, an organization that helps fund new student recovery support programs at educational institutions and in communities across the nation. Specifically, the grant will be able to help OASIS develop its program to better suit the needs of IU students with more varied support options.
Already, OASIS has introduced weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on campus, formed the Students in Recovery-Bloomington organization to provide addiction support and education across campus and created their own Collegiate Recovery Student Advisory Board to help develop more ways to provide support for IU students struggling with substance abuse and recovery.
Additionally, the program will be using the grant money to create a physical map with the locations of all of IU’s support services to present a more formalized way of helping students find the support they need on campus, and they will be working to further develop a plan to implement sober housing on campus as well.
OASIS also hopes to start a media campaign designed to bring greater awareness to collegiate addiction and recovery before the end of the semester. The best part of it will be that students themselves will be crafting the messages.
“This is what’s important to students. My voice can only do so much, but the students’ voices are what is actually valuable,” Daniels said.
OASIS is a department of the IU Health Center and Division of Student Affairs. For more information or to get involved, visit the OASIS website.
