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AROUND THE QUADS

Alice! Offers Students A Source For Advice
By Shira Boss

Stressbusters use massage therapy to loosen up students. Photo: Shira J. Boss

Since when does Columbia teach massage classes, salsa workshops and seminars on how to flirt? Since Alice! came to campus. Alice! is the collective name of the school's innovative health education program, one of the most progressive in the country.

Off campus, it is best known in the form of its acclaimed and comfortably anonymous website for health information called Go Ask Alice! On campus, Alice! has built a reputation as an easy-going, comprehensive and trusted place to turn for information on everything from allergies to relationships.

In addition to maintaining its website, the Alice! staff coaches students on managing time and reducing stress, guides them in quitting smoking, gives grants for alcohol-free student events, distributes informational pamphlets and stocks 20,000 condoms per year for the taking.

The massage, dancing and flirting events are part of the annual Safer Sex Awareness Week, held the week before Valentine's Day. They are in part designed to demonstrate physical but non-sexual ways students can relate to one another. During the week students can also pick up safer sex kits and get informational tips as well as munchies during events such as the popular "Orgasm, Pleasure and Pizza" night hosted by Judith Steinhart, one of Alice!'s leaders. Her affability and soothing manner combine with her 20 years' experience as a sex educator, counselor and therapist lead many students to think she is Alice personified, and to call her by that name.

Another of the week's events is "Singing about Sex," for which student artists write and perform songs with safer-sex lyrics. Jordan Friedman, the director of Alice!, is so impressed by the quality of the musical talent on campus that last year he started planning "CU on CD," a safer-sexy soundtrack that would play music both in regular compact disc players and in computers, which would give the tunes new life with written links to information about the topics in each song.

Alice! is always looking for new ways to reach students, and the multi-media approach has been well-received in the past. Spring Break Survival Kits, handed out on campus the week before break, have featured a cassette tape, "Sex Chat Unplugged," with infotaining skits about sex, drugs and alcohol read by students. Packed in a motion sickness bag, the kits have also included hangover tips, drug and alcohol information pamphlets, condoms and soap samples.

As more events and handouts catch students' attention, they respond with feedback, questions and requests. Last year students said they liked reading information in private and requested more pamphlets. Now "Alice! To Go" wall racks around campus buildings and in dorms dispense leaflets on about 50 different topics. Although some are about sexual health and concerns, Alice! also addresses nutrition, reducing stress, quitting smoking, alcohol abuse, and other topics of concern to college students.

"A friend of mine here is thinking about getting a skin piercing and just told me, 'I know, I'll just go talk to Alice,'" said Tom Hughes '00.

Already a model for other universities, Alice! is constantly making improvements and expanding its scope. An outside consultant who reviewed the school's alcohol abuse and sexual assault programs in 1998 helped define focus areas and priority issues, and a 30-person committee has been meeting quarterly to address those issues. Another initiative aims to broaden Alice!'s cross-cultural awareness and make sure it is addressing every group's needs.

Some of Alice!'s pamphlets come to life during seminars, offered in a series or as one-day workshops. Students sign up for these voluntary mini-courses on becoming more assertive, learning time management techniques, managing a healthy diet or discovering, "Who am I and what do I want from life?"

A popular program on reducing stress has spawned "stressbusters." Students are trained by a licensed massage therapist to give mini-massages on the shoulders, neck and back. Then they are hired for $8.50 an hour to loosen up students and staff for special occasions or at various campus events (always in a group setting). To acquaint students with its new Lerner Hall location, Alice! started offering "Wind Down Wednesdays," free mini-massages at noon. "The response has been incredible - we have people lined up before 12 o'clock," Friedman says.

A centerpiece of health education at Columbia and now for the public is the Go Ask Alice! website. It started in 1993 for Columbia students to ask questions using cunix, the university's computer network. "We put it on the World Wide Web for the world to access and sometimes we feel that the entire world does access it," Friedman says.

The site (www.goaskalice.columbia.edu) provides health information and a searchable database of questions asked anonymously by e-mail and answered by Alice!'s staff of health educators and student researchers. They get about 1,500 submissions every week, from general health queries to specific questions about sex and relationships, and get about 1.5 million hits (visits) every month.

"We constantly stress that people should talk to their doctors, but some people are scared to talk to their doctors," says Chris Geissler '00, a student researcher at Alice!. "My hope is that once we give them some information, they're more comfortable going to them."

Because the site is open to access by anyone, some groups have protested that children can read information that is at times sexually explicit. Counters Friedman, "You have to actively search out those questions, it's not like anyone would come across them without looking for them. He also suggests that concerned parents practice "safer surfing" - going on line with their children so they can discuss the information and add their own input. "We almost never, ever receive any negative mail or response from the public or the press," he adds.

They have received letters of praise from parents, librarians, grandmothers and clergy as well as students and others who testify that the site is doing a lot of good. One section of the site that addresses concerns of parents cites a 1997 research article in the Journal of Adolescent Research that presented a study showing that more sex education led to more abstinence, more responsible sexual activity and a decrease in unwanted pregnancies.

Friedman is now working with schools and public libraries on issues of access to the Internet and intellectual freedom, and has spoken at nationwide conferences such as for the American Library Association and the American College Health Association.

"When I go around the country I can't believe the number of people who know about the site, use it, refer to it, download stuff - it's astounding and it makes you feel really good," he says. "It's good for us and a great role for Columbia. We've always felt that the potential of our work goes well beyond the computer screen and CU's gates."

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