Shippensburg University authorities remain certain that the biggest substance issues SU students face are marijuana and alcohol.
According to SU Dean of Students and Connect Program Director Ann Wendle, marijuana and alcohol account for nearly all of SU’s drug-related arrests.
“Those are the only things we are seeing with any regularity on campus,” Wendle said.
SU police department Lt. Thomas Rumberger agreed with Wendle, citing marijuana and alcohol use as the most frequently committed crimes on campus.
“They’re both criminal violations and we kind of treat them the same way,” Rumberger said. “We have a zero tolerance policy on both. So if we get called into a situation and you have either, you’re going to get charged.”
Rumberger said two heroin overdoses occurred in Stoneridge Apartments last fall.
Wendle said because marijuana and alcohol are so dominant among drug-related crimes on campus, she knows what to expect.
“It simplifies our operation,” Wendle said. “I hope that what we have reported is reflective of what is actually going on, but that’s the hard thing about all of this.”
Wendle went on to say while SU’s campus drug culture remains fixated mostly of marijuana and alcohol, other areas face harder drug problems.
“At other [Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education] schools…there is a lot of prescription painkiller use. But it doesn’t happen here. At least not enough that it’s on our radar.”
Wendle said she believes the other biggest drug problems SU students face are from Adderall and Ritalin, which she said students take to study and to stay awake.
While SU’s drug problems remain rooted around drugs that Wendle described as “broadly accepted,” the nation-wide opioid crisis is not far from SU.
Six people overdosed on heroin in one night in Shippensburg, according to Wendle. While heroin is not an active problem for on campus authorities, Rumberger says the drug could reach students.
“The university itself is a microcosm of greater society,” Rumberger said. “Things that are going on in a bigger society could happen here.”
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