Teenage drinking: New program focuses on educating adults on the dangers of teenage alcohol consumption

Some decisions Jenna Bieker made during her junior year at Forest Park didn’t make her very popular among her peers.

But she knew that she wouldn’t be able to deal with the guilt if something bad happened to a student and she had just stood by and watched.

A party that was happening on some property in a county next door was going to be huge. Many students were planning on going and of course, there was going to be a lot of alcohol.

“I heard people (students) in every class talking about taking alcohol and going out to this cabin out of the county and then driving back after the party,” she explained.

Jenna was concerned that someone would end up hurt during the party or as they drove back home that night. So, she reported it to some adults.

The results were as expected; students were mad at her for reporting the party. She was ostracized. But the party was moved into Ferdinand and no one ended up in the newspaper.

“I got a lot of hateful phone calls and there was a social backlash,” Jenna said.”It sucked but I would do it again.”

Surprisingly, a couple students thanked her for reporting it.

Jenna said she avoided alcohol as a teen. Maybe it was her strict parents, but her teenage perspective on alcohol consumption was likely impacted by what she saw her family members in law enforcement dealing with over the years. Her uncle is Ted Bieker, a longtime officer in Ferdinand, and her godmother is Jenny Lampert, Dubois County’s Chief Probation Officer.

“I got to vicariously see what happens when you start drinking at an early age,” she explained.

Now graduated from Indiana University Southeast with a bachelor’s of science in criminal justice and psychology, Jenna has taken some steps to address the increasing amount of teenage drinking in Dubois County.

Also growing up, she saw that some adults and parents condone the activity by providing a place for teens to drink.

This summer she was awarded a fellowship through the Dubois County Community Foundation to create a program to address a community need. Based on her teenage experiences and the culture of underage drinking acceptance perpetuated in Dubois County, she decided to use that to address the adults in the community who enable teenage drinking.

While working as an intern at the local Purdue Extension, Jenna launched a new Facebook Page and built a website addressing the impact of drinking on teens. The site also informs parents and older siblings of the potential legal repercussions of supplying minors alcohol or hosting parties with alcohol.

Jenna’s efforts are affiliated with Parents Who Host Lose the Most: Don’t Be a Party to Teenage Drinking, a national organization dedicated to changing parent’s perspectives in regards to the impact of alcohol on developing brains. Jenna just finished her undergrad work in psychology and criminal justice at Indiana University Southeast, so she has a special interest in mental health and how it affects society.

“The psych-nerd in me is very interested in cerebral development,” she explained. “As an adolescent and your brain is developing, especially your pre-frontal cortex. That is your decision-making and a lot of your emotion regulation.”

Drinking alcohol has been proven to impact developing brains, therefore, a connection exists between adult mental health and early consumption of alcohol.

“When you are a young kid (more than 3% of Dubois County sixth graders have reported they drink alcohol weekly) and you are interfering with your brain’s ability to make those connections,” she explained. “then your brain is busy with that instead of developing those other necessary connections.”

Later in life, this can lead to higher rates of alcoholism as well as criminal behavior or poor decision-making skills.

Not only is there an impact on kids development, Indiana’s Social Host law holds adults who allow minors to consume alcohol on personal property legally responsible for the illegal activity. It is a Class B misdemeanor for someone to provide alcohol to a minor or provides a personal location where alcohol can be consumed by a minor. It increases to a Level 6 felony charge if someone suffers serious injury or death due to the consumption of the alcohol.

Jenna explained that she felt adults don’t understand the long-term impact of these short-term decisions to allow students to drink. Although she acknowledged that teenage drinking is a problem everywhere, in her personal experience, Dubois County seems to incorporate drinking into its culture to a greater extent.

“It is such a culturally accepted thing,” she explained. “People know and they don’t care. They act like it’s just a part of growing up here.”

She hopes her efforts will cause that cultural acceptance to change.

“There seems to be such a ‘we can’t beat them, so let’s join them’ attitude here,” she said. “That’s what got us here. I know I’m picking a long, uphill battle that may not be totally supported by most people. That’s okay, somebody has to be the naysayer.”

Jenna is heading to the Robert McKinney School of Law at Indiana University this fall. When she’s finished, she wants to return to Dubois County to work in the prosecuting attorney’s office. Her goal is to continue to impact the community in a positive way when she returns. To ensure the Parents Who Host Lose the Most program continues, she plans on handing it over to Dubois County CARES.

Dubois County CARES, or Coalition for Adolescent Resilience and Empowerment Strategies, formed in 2016 to address the drug and alcohol use among teens in the county. Their goal is to empower youth to be alcohol and drug-free and open lines of communication between family members.

Jan Dougan, the Purdue Extension Educator whom Jenna interned with, is also a member of Dubois County CARES. Dougan encouraged Jenna to work on the problem for her fellowship and now, Dubois County CARES plans on incorporating the messaging into it’s programming to lower teen drug and alcohol use in the county.

Dubois County – Parents Who Host, Lose the Most has a page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dcparentswhohost/ and a website here https://dcparentswhohost.wixsite.com/pwhltm. Future plans include posting flyers and a marketing campaign in the county to help train parents and adults about the issues.

Information on Dubois County CARES can be found here.

“Hopefully it will be a trickle-down effect that actually works if I can change the parents’ perspectives,” Jenna said.