At the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity's national convention in Tampa in August, an elderly alumnus who'd been a member of the house's Johns Hopkins University chapter presented Steve Ehrfurth with a unique proposition.
The alum, who'd graduated in the 1960s, was at his old chapter house in Maryland when he heard some undergraduates enthusiastically discussing sports bets they'd placed.
“I think just hearing these conversations was an eye-opening moment to him,” said Ehrfurth, the executive director of Alpha Delta Phi's national organization, which is headquartered in Minnesota. “It was a different experience than he was used to.”
The alum told Ehrfurth that he'd been in touch with another Alpha Delt from Hopkins, Quinn Donaldson, who was working with Birches Health, a New York-based provider of telehealth counseling for people suffering from problematic issues involving gambling, sports betting, day trading, sex, and pornography. This dialogue reached a crescendo two weeks ago, when Alpha Delta Phi's national office announced that it had forged a partnership with Birches wherein free counseling services concerning those behaviors would be available to active brethren and alumni alike.
“We didn’t really gauge an interest level outside of that initial conversation,” Ehrfurth said. “There was no financial gain or cost for us. We didn’t know what the success rate would be. We just viewed it as the increase in sports betting – we kind of had rumblings here and there of undergraduates doing this, but we didn’t gauge their interest.”
Nonchalant as Ehrfurth's genesis story sounds, the result is somewhat groundbreaking. Outside of a program that's being launched at the University of Cincinnati, outreach to Greek members has fallen on the shoulders of recovering gambling addicts like Patrick Chester, who made a pilgrimage to Alpha Delta Phi's University of Washington chapter last fall and was touched by how attuned its members were to his cautionary tale.
“Colleges are making stronger connections to community support and mental health resources, but this is another level of commitment,” said Michael A. Buzzelli, the associate director of the Problem Gambling Network of Ohio who's been involved in the Cincinnati program. “Any time a Greek Life chapter creates a formal partnership with a behavioral health entity, that is a massive step in the right direction — not just for overall wellness and promotion of resources, but for breaking down stigma and letting college students know that it is OK to not be OK.”'
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'It's about giving people control'
Chester, who's now in his early 50s, has a 15-year-old son who plays offensive and defensive line for his high school football team.'
“From my conversations with people in that age group, they’re very engaged with some of these things and they’re very in tune with the mental health side of not just gambling, but all the things they have to deal with,” Chester said while en route to a meeting with some coaches at Arizona State University. “They’re very forward-thinking and they’re trying to figure out ways to get involved and get groups organized and start the conversation. A lot of them are very proactive. It’s very different than when you and I were that age.”
When Donaldson, who was raised in Ohio and played wide receiver for Johns Hopkins, first started putting together partnerships for Birches, he immediately sensed there'd be a need on campuses nationwide.
“When it came to trying to spread awareness about our services and wanting to get ourselves in front of more people, we thought of the fraternity organizations as a key demographic that would be in need of services like ours,” he said. “We’ve seen rises in the accessibility of online sports betting and gambling. Since graduation, I’d stayed close to a number of fraternity brothers at AD Phi. I was fortunate enough to get connected to Steve.”
Donaldson added that he'd been in touch with other Greek organizations and some gambling operators about prospective collaborations, and that Birches would be announcing additional partnerships “in the coming weeks.”'
“For us, it's about giving people control of their lives” said Donaldson. “There are things in life that you can do with a responsible manner, gambling being one of those things. It can be enjoyable.”
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