KINGSTON – University of Rhode Island President Robert L. Carothers has been honored for his efforts in alcohol-abuse prevention with the 2007 Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Award.
The annual award is presented by Connie and Howard Clery – founders of Security on Campus Inc., a nonprofit that aims to prevent violence, substance abuse and other crimes – in honor of their daughter, who was murdered in 1986 on the Lehigh University campus. It recognizes individuals who have taken extraordinary actions to make students safer.
“I am honored to have been selected to receive an award from an organization which has worked so hard to protect college students,” said Carothers, who has been working for more than a decade to curb alcohol use at URI and nationwide.
His campaign – launched shortly after he arrived at the university, which from 1993 to 1995 had been ranked by Princeton Review as the nation’s top “party school” – has included a ban on alcohol on social events on campus, mandatory alcohol-awareness training for freshmen and a new URI-Narragansett Community Coalition that addresses problems in concert with the local community.
“All of our efforts at reducing the abuse of alcohol and drugs on campus have been aimed at making this a safe environment in which our students can learn,” Carothers said. “While we are proud of the progress we have made, every year a new class of freshmen arrives on campus, reminding me that there is still so much to be done.”
Active in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Carothers is a member of the NIAAA College Drinking Task Force’s Panel on Prevention and Treatment and participated in the influential NIAAA report “A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at U.S. Colleges.”
His leadership in alcohol-abuse prevention was honored in 2004 by the Center for College Health and Safety, a division of the Educational Development Center in Newton Mass.
Additional information is available at www.uri.edu.
