Collegiate Times

"You still got that three-year period where you are and you're not (an adult)," said General District Court Judge Gino Williams, while sitting in an office in the Blacksburg Municipal building. He is leaning back in a plush leather chair, in a stark white button down shirt with neatly combed hair, his arms folded behind his head. "And the consequences of a conviction for alcohol possession, if you go into a job with the federal government that requires a security clearance, it could affect it. You don't think about those things when you're 18 and starting out or 19 as a sophomore. You don't think about the ramifications of a conviction or the ramifications of having it on you're record so it's, 'Who knows?' That's way down the road. That's something far off."

Williams has been witness to the hundreds of youths who have gone through his court each year and ended up in the New River Valley VASAP. After seeing so many faces and convictions, he has noticed a common denominator in most of the offenses.

"As you get older," he said, "you sort of look back and you think of all the things that occur: the assaults, almost all of the criminal offenses and stuff, that occur in this court in this particular jurisdiction in Blacksburg have an alcohol component. The assaults, the destructions of property, almost everything I see has alcohol involved in it; it's not just the being underage part. Alcohol is the driving force probably behind 85 percent or 90 percent of the crimes that occur in this courtroom."

Naturally, there are dissenting opinions on the efficiency of VASAP or what it accomplishes between those who oversee the program and those who have been through it. The student perceives VASAP as effective in the sense that it does damages to a college-sized wallet and makes one go to classes that they never want to come back to.

"I think as a punitive measure it was pretty effective," Phillips said. "No one wants to go to eight classes. They also charge you money."

On the other side of the spectrum, Marshon looks at the number of repeat offenders to weigh the success of a program she has dedicated so much of her time to.

"We look at the numbers of people coming back," she said, "which are very few. We have about a 12 percent recidivism rate, which is really low."

Those who do end up making repeat appearances are the worst part of the job for Williams.

"What bothers me the most," he said, "is seeing them come back the second time when they've had an opportunity, and you know that they've probably got a problem. I see so many students come through the first time with an offense; it's when they start coming back, and I start seeing them, that there's still a disconnect, and they're still continuing to particularly drink, and they're drinking a lot."

But, fear not, VASAP has a program for that.

"What we try to do through our program," Williams said, "is to get them into direct counseling rather than the group counseling if we think there is a problem. It's a step up; it's a more intensive program."

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