There are a lot of terms that are thrown around when people talk about life at Virginia Tech. A litany of vocabulary exists that only a true native could appreciate. Terms such as "Owens," "GLC" and "VASAP" are commonly flipped about between students. The last phrase, however; is truly understood by few.
"It's like the best kept secret in Virginia," said Susan Marshon, executive director of the New River Valley VASAP located in Christiansburg. "How does VASAP work?"
VASAP stands for the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program, and Marshon and her staff comprise one of 24 local ASAPs around Virginia.
The program originated in 1976 after the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation expanding a self-sustaining pilot program statewide that was started in 1972. The pilot program was conceived as a means to combat a rising issue with drinking and driving as well as related DUI offenses.
"Virginia got a federal grant," Marshon said, "to do a pilot project to try to figure out what might work to handle the DUI offenders, so it was primarily started to deal with just DUI offenders, but it became a really interesting model because it didn't cost anything."
With 7,000 offenders coming through the VASAP doors every year, fees paid by offenders is what keep the program afloat.
"VASAP is a user-funded program," Marshon said. "We get no money from the state or the federal government, and it's important because we're the only agency probably in the country that functions that way."
Today, the Christiansburg VASAP has grown to treat more than just DUI offenders in the fourth planning district that it covers (Floyd, Montgomery, Pulaski, Giles and the City of Radford). It also takes drug offenders and DUID charges, reckless driving offenders, intoxicated in public offenders and liquor law offenders who violate laws such as underage possession of alcohol or buying alcohol for a minor. Depending on the charge, offenders can expect to receive one of the following penalties and are susceptible to more than just one depending on the nature and regulations of the convicted crime: attend mandatory educational classes, submit to random drug/alcohol screenings (normally at the start of classes), enroll in community service, and possibly have their driver's license revoked or suspended. In some of the more serious charges, such as repeated DUI charges, an ignition interlock is placed inside of the offender's vehicle, which forces the driver to blow into the ignition interlock device every 20 minutes - proving his breath is alcohol-free - while driving or risk having his car shut down. He is also expected to pay fines, which in part pays for a case manager to oversee an individual's completion of the VASAP programs.
"Unlike what you might expect," Marshon said, "they're also placed on probation, and what they're paying for is their probation supervision. Because the common question I get is, 'You mean I have to pay for my community service?' No, you're not paying to do your community service. You're paying for your probation supervision, so depending on the number of hours that you get that determines the length of time that you'll be on probation and how much it will cost."
What has caused the program to change and expand in the past 30 years into the multi-faceted organization that it is now is because largely in part of a local board, which tries to address the changing needs of the various counties and communities. The board works with local legislators in order to fine tune any small details that may be individual to the area that the overarching ASAP plan may not cover.
"The local boards are able to establish programs to meet the needs of their local courts," Marshon said. "So we have a great big young offender program here, and the program up in Harrisonburg has a really big young offender program because they've got various colleges and universities. You might go down to Southwest Virginia; they have no young offender program because they don't have the population."
The young offender program is probably the most notoriously known VASAP program to Tech students, and with good reason, as about 900 people go through it each year. This figure includes students from Blacksburg and Radford. In this program, offenders under the age of 25 are given the option of attending a mandatory eight-week educational program on top of about $200 worth of fees in exchange for having the charge reduced or dismissed.
Marshon said that charges such as underage possession of alcohol and using a fake ID are the two primary reasons for people coming to the young offender program.
A Tech sophomore, who wished to remain anonymous, had to go through this program after he was caught .06 BAC deep into some whiskey in a friend's car on the way to University of Virginia last September. The car the 19-year-old was in, which featured a sober driver, had been pulled over for improper use of its high beams while driving down interstate 81 at night. After facing charges in Botetourt county, the local judge assigned him 50 hours of community service, suspended his license for six months, and required that he complete the young offender VASAP program.
Once he was properly registered for the course after court in October, the next eight weeks would find the sophomore carpooling with others down to 175 Independence Blvd., site of the Christiansburg VASAP. Past the Christiansburg high school, the building is a two-story modest, brown brick structure whose backdrop features a large construction yard. The waiting room for the place has the sterile feeling of a doctor's office; there are comfy blue chairs and magazines lying around, but the fact that one has to be buzzed in to go past the main room and can only talk to the receptionist behind a teller's plate of glass reminds any individual of what the score here really is.
The student would arrive at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday nights to a classroom on the lower level of the NRV VASAP building where an ex-police officer who was his instructor would be waiting for him.
"He'd have us blow into a sensor," Phillips said, "and figure out if any of us were boozing up before the meeting."
The material taught in the class is based on criteria used by the rest of the state.
"We have standard curriculum throughout the state," Marshon said, "and each instructor is trained in how to use those curriculum. There's a standard curriculum that every ASAP uses, so if you go to an education program here, you'll go to the same education program in Fairfax. The state has a standard set of curriculum for every intervention program that we offer."
To the 19-year-old, the class seemed mostly composed of videos and discussion. Some of the discussion covered alcohol laws, what behaviors police officers look for, what rights a person has versus what the police have the right to do, and brainstorming sessions on increasing safety or awareness.
"One of the activities was along the lines of what could students do to decrease the number of alcohol-related deaths or something like that, and we're supposed to come up with ideas like student-run alcohol classes or students DDing or making sure your friends don't drink entire handles in an hour."
"There were some heavy videos," he later added. "There was one video about a guy who had 700 drunk in public arrests over the course of 15, 20 years, and after like three years of picking this dude up one of the jailers at this California beach jail started filming him."
The student claims that he is not a heavy drinker, that he drinks only once a week at maximum, and that his circumstance was the product of bad luck. Because of this, the program did not have much of an effect on the chemical engineering major, and he does not plan to change his drinking behavior while presently in college.
"I don't think anyone really came away with it with any sort of revelation," he said. "It wasn't a life-changing experience. He didn't go about the course in a way that it was supposed to correct our behavior. It was kind of like, how to keep us from getting in trouble again."
The sophomore is not too worried about the underage possession of alcohol that currently stains his record either.
"Career wise," he said, "I'm sure that I'll be doing entry-level shit for a while anyway, so by the time it's important, it'll be irrelevant."
While the student may be unphased by his experiences, other members of the Blacksburg community feel that many college students do not think far enough into the future before taking risks such as excessive drinking, drinking underage or getting behind the wheel intoxicated.
"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."