Cindy Clouner
Yeah, I think just being aware of the issue is is such a big first step. There’s so much opportunity for education right now because of all the reasons that people we’ve already talked about, students just don’t even realize that some of the things that they’re doing are considered gambling and and, you know, the gambling activities in and of themselves, there isn’t anything wrong with that, right? There are a lot of people who can engage in some of these activities that we’ve talked about without experiencing any harms from them.

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Keith Edwards, today we’re talking about college student gambling. This is not a new phenomenon, but the landscape around it has changed dramatically in the last few years. I’m joined by three experts to have help us look at this from all angles. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, you can find new details and new episodes or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com This episode is sponsored by evolve. Evolve empowers higher ed leaders to lead with and through perilous times by releasing fear, gaining courage and taking action through an executive coaching program, including individual and group coaching and intentionally designed and curated curriculum to maximize impact. And also here on here on educational research and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovation, financial, health and student success. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, Him, His. I’m a speaker, author and coach, empowering exceptional higher ed, leadership for betters tomorrow, better tomorrows for us all through leadership, learning and equity. Can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com and I’m recording this for my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is at the intersections of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to the conversation and meet our expert as guests here today, Cindy, we’re going to begin with you, and then Dolores and then Lindsay. Cindy, go ahead and tell us a little bit about you. Yeah,

Cindy Clouner
hi everyone. Hi Keith. Thank you so much for letting for inviting me to be here. My name is Cindy Clouner. I’m the managing director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and drug misuse prevention and recovery. We’re an academic center at Ohio State, and we work to support campuses across the country as they address substance misuse issues across the continuum. So that is prevention, early intervention, all the way to supporting students who are in seeking long term recovery, so making sure that those campus professionals doing that work, our health promotion specialists, our wellness directors and and the folks that do that work look different across all campuses across the country. They have the skills and knowledge they need to be able to do that work. I’ve always worked in the field of prevention. I started in school and community based prevention in rural Ohio, but I’ve been with the higher ed center now for 10 years, and have been really excited about the work that we’re doing in the gambling space, which has been a new space for the center, but a really exciting one to be in. Awesome. Thanks

Keith Edwards
for being here. Dolores, why don’t you tell folks a little bit more about you? Bit more

M. Dolores Cimini
about you? Yes, and thank you so much for inviting me to participate in this very important discussion. I’m Dr Dolores Cimini. I’m a licensed psychologist in New York State, and I’ve spent over three decades in the field of student affairs at the University at Albany, and I’m currently a faculty member in the School of Education at the University in Albany, where I do teaching oversight of dissertations. And I’m also the founding director of the Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and applied research at UAlbany at the university, our center focuses on translational research, translating research to practice in the area of alcohol and other drugs, suicide prevention, mental health promotion and prevention of other risk behaviors. I’ve been involved in authoring two books and a number of research articles, and have had our work advanced with over $16 million in grants.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. And then we have our ring leader here, Lindsay, who has helped put this on my radar and recommended both Cindy and Dolores. Lindsay, why don’t you tell us all a little

Lindsey Mortenson
bit more about you? Thanks, Keith. And I’m really honored to be with this group today. So my name is Lindsey Morton’s and I wear a few different hats at the University of Michigan. I spend most of my time as the Executive Director of University Health and Counseling at the University of Michigan, which is a large student, faculty and staff health center that’s integrated with mental health services has 19 different service lines and even includes Division One athletic medicine. And I’m also, for the last three years, have been in a new role at the University of Michigan, within student affairs, or student life, as we call it, at Michigan, as the chief mental health officer. A tiny 5% of what I do at Michigan is as a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry. So I do see students as a psychiatrist in our student psychiatry clinic and also in the psychiatric emergency room, which is, fortunately for us, right around the corner from our student health clinic. So those are the three hats that I wear at the University of Michigan. All right.

Keith Edwards
Well, as I mentioned, as we were getting started, the landscape here has shifted considerably. I think gambling is as old as time, but the rules and the access has really shifted. I’d love Cindy for you to begin by helping bring our audience up to speed on how things have shifted. I’m thinking about you can go wherever you want with this, but I’m thinking about legality. I’m thinking about phones. I’m thinking about gamification. I’m thinking about credit cards. I’m thinking about major, major shifts in college sports and college partnerships with gambling entities. How would you help frame this for folks who maybe are remembering what it was like when they were college students, and maybe how things have shifted, even if they were only college students three years ago. Yeah,

Cindy Clouner
absolutely, you’re right. The landscape has shifted so quickly and continues to change constantly around what is considered legal gambling behaviors, what are just other gambling activities. The way people can gamble has changed so dramatically and continues to change very, very quickly. And so, you know, for a lot of people, when you first think about gambling, you think Las Vegas, you think casinos, you think card games, slot machines. And while that certainly is all gambling behaviors and gambling activities. When we are thinking about our college students, that is not what they think of. In fact, oftentimes saying the word gambling. They do think of that. They don’t think of some of the activities that they are more likely to be engaging in, like sports betting, and that is really the legalization of sports betting, which has has happened through a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to legalize sports betting, that has led to this such a dramatic shift in policy around legalizing gambling throughout the country. So not all states have legalized sports betting. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t students in every state still sports betting, and that is really where we see a lot of students engaging in in betting behaviors, gambling activities and experiencing harm. What brought this issue to the radar of our center? Because, as I said, we have worked historically in the alcohol and drug space, but it was a November 2022 New York Times article about the caesarization of campuses that got our attention. So I don’t know if anyone remembered seeing this article. I see Lindsey nodding her head. It was a pretty big deal when it came out, and what it looked at was this new trend in campuses having contracts with sports books to promote gambling in university settings, so within stadiums, and for us as a center who is focused on supporting student health and well being, because we know, you know, alcohol and other drugs, problem, gambling, mental health, they all play such a critical role in Student Success on Campus, and then once they graduate success out in the world, that that really is a mixed message to students, because of the harms that are associated with with gambling, college students have always been at a significantly higher risk for this issue, and the folks working in Problem Gambling outside of campuses have known this for a very long time. So while it is a new issue that many of our campuses are starting to tackle, within the last couple of years, folks in the community problem gambling space have been knocking on college campuses doors for many, many years trying to, like, you know, ring the bell that this is something that we should be paying attention to. But it really took this legalization of sports betting from the Supreme Court before campuses are finally seeing the impact that it’s having having on students. And the big difference is that ease of access, right? So it used to be that if you wanted to engage in gambling, you might have to go somewhere. You might have to go to a casino. You know, when I was in college, casinos weren’t legal in the state of Ohio, so you would have to leave the states or leave the country. You know, we’re very close to Canada, so that was a very common practice for folks, was to go to Canada, and you couldn’t you could gamble there at casinos. It’s so much easier now, because there’s so many opportunities for gambling activities on people’s phones, and we see an increase in gamification. So this idea that activities that may on face value are not gambling have had components integrated into them that then make them gambling. So an example of that it could be loot boxes in games that students might be playing, either on video games or, you know, on. And cell phone games, downloading apps, those things that where you have an opportunity to make a purchase for something, and you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting right. So it could be skins, it could be extra lives, it could be lots of things, but students and those things can vary in rarity. So some of them are very valuable to people who spend a lot of time playing these games, and they’ll actually pay real money to try to purchase these rare things, but you can you to guarantee that purchase, but you can also spend the money not knowing for sure what you’re going to get. And students don’t think of those things as gambling, not just students, but a lot of people don’t think of those things as gambling, because probably many folks listening have children that are engaging in activities on their tablets. They’re playing Roblox, they’re playing other games where they are purchasing robux and gambling without even realizing that those activities are gambling. And so it really is this integration of gambling activities into kind of some of the more everyday tasks that people engage in, and having it all be in your pocket all day long, I think, are two of the things that have really exacerbated this issue for our students.

Speaker 1
Cindy make me think of something as well as you’re talking and that is having worked in student affairs several decades. There are many activities that students can engage in for very good causes, such as fundraising for cancer research and the like. And they sponsor things such as bingo games and things that resemble gambling in itself. It’s not something that’s that’s risky, but certainly it’s, it’s promotion of the activity, of winning something and of value by engaging in a game like activity.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Well, Cindy, you mentioned that that caesarification of campuses and that that story led to some other things, which led to a podcast we did in 223 with Timothy Fong, bone Lofton and George McClellan. So we’ll put a link to that in the show. But that is really about the partnerships between these gambling entities and colleges, and at the very beginning of that, sort of sounding some alarms around that. Well here we’re focused on the context Cindy’s laid out in a lot of context stores. What else do you want to add about the context, about the shifting landscape here?

Speaker 1
Well, I think that what we’re seeing right now is that if we look at the national landscape, gambling activities engaged in by college students and actually by the general population, are quite underreported, because if you ask someone, are you gambling, they’re likely to say no. But if you’re more specific in what you ask, do you play horses? Do you play casinos? Do you do you play games online, and that type of thing? The more specific we are about asking about gambling activities, the more likely people will understand that they’re engaging in gambling activities. So it’s really, really critical as we look at the national landscape and try and get a handle on what we’re dealing with here that we are very specific and pointed about what we want to know. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
Lindsey, what would you add?

Lindsey Mortenson
You know, one of the comments earlier was about the generational divide, and I think that cannot be underscored enough, which is that many faculty and staff on campuses are in a completely different generation than students of today. I think we have four or five generations on average on a college campus, and this is one of the many things that really inhibits detection of of gambling related activities and gambling related harms is that the screening tools that were developed were developed in a in a bygone era that were anchored to land based casinos, so we’re not even asking the right questions. And most of us, and I would put myself in this category, are still learning and don’t even know the right questions to ask, right? So Cindy mentioned loot boxes, right? Crypto currency, nfts, prediction markets, hybrid fantasy platforms, online, live dealing decentralized finance. I mean, these are things that all represent forms of gambling. And if you don’t know how to ask, and you know, as as the mom of two teenage sons, I get this in spades, if you don’t know how to ask, you might really get a truthful answer. That is, is not really what you’re looking for. So I think that we all have a lot of learning to do about this topic. And you. Um, I think that this also extends to the idea of of gambling related harms. When you look at the old screening tools, they are anchored to diagnostic criteria that focus on harm to the gambler, and that is really out of step with what we understand now about the scope of gambling related harms, and I’ll give you a couple of specific examples of this, which is that actually the people I hear from the most in my work, since I’ve been kind of dabbling in this topic, starting earlier last year, are actually women. It’s girlfriends, it’s moms, it’s spouses and partners who say, like, I can’t get my fill in the blank my son’s attention at the dinner table. Games used to be fun to watch now they’re stressful, or my son just seems depressed and worried about money. Could it be related to sports betting and the the gambling related harms. There’s this idea of collateral damage in gambling, which is that for every gambler who is a problematic gambler, they may harm actually up to not only themselves, but up to six or seven other people in their lives. And so I think this is really something to ask when you’re you know, in conversation with people about gambling is just, not only what are the Gam what would have been maybe the effects on you, but how is this maybe impacted the lives of people around you or in your

Keith Edwards
life? Yeah, I find that really interesting, because, you know, when I think about smoking and the impacts of secondhand smoke or or alcohol abuse and the impacts on other people in the community, maybe a fight or, or other things, but gambling is not as so intuitive about the kind of impacts on others. So I really appreciate you bringing that up. Well, that’s a bit about how the context has really, really shifted. And Lindsay, you strung to gather a bunch of things I need to Google after this conversation and look up, because it is that dynamic. It is that is that moving? How Lindsey, how are, how are we seeing? That’s about the context. How are we seeing college students gambling. How is, how is that shifting as this happens?

Lindsey Mortenson
I wish I had a better answer than this, but I would say it’s moving so fast that I think our detection systems and screening tools and research are just way behind number one. You know, from a research perspective, never mind what’s happening kind of with federal funding. Addiction funding tends to follow alcohol and drugs of abuse. It doesn’t tend to track gambling, and so we already are kind of behind the eight ball as a society in terms of understanding the impact here in the US. I think there are some countries and areas of the world we can look to where sports betting in particular, and other forms of gambling have been legal for a lot longer, but candidly, I think we all are going to have to get creative on college campuses and really go to the students and be in more conversation with them about how this is showing up in their lives, because we have some idea, but I’m not sure we really realize the full scope of what is happening when students are not only, you know, on their phones and have the phone in the pocket, as Cindy alluded but even in the classroom, you know, students are in an electronic milieu almost all day. You know, whatever educational platform your college uses, you’re in an online platform all day. And you know, anecdotally, I’ve heard from faculty and administrators who sometimes are sitting in the back of classrooms. You know, reviewing classes are sitting in and laptops are open to sports books. People are watching lines of games. They probably are open to other things that are not even recognizable to some of the faculty and staff who are sort of in a different generation. One of the things that I just recently have started to understand is the way that some universities, some not have firewalls for certain gambling platforms, and sometimes it differs within the same university depending on which regional campus you’re on or which part of campus you’re on. So I would just say there’s a ton to learn, and I wish I had a better answer. I’m guessing maybe Dolores and Cindy probably can speak better to this, but I think we’re seeing like the tip of the iceberg with sports gambling. That really suggests a much, much deeper and broader experience with gambling that are the college students of today are really like, it’s the water that many of them are swimming

Keith Edwards
in. Yeah. Dolores, what would you add about the shifts we’re seeing in college students gambling?

Speaker 1
Well, certainly I would agree with what Lindy Lindsay has said in terms of what we’re seeing and the changes happening so quickly, I want to take. As well a student affairs perspective and looking at what is, what is happening to the student, what, what makes college student uniquely qualified, uniquely at risk for consequences of gambling. And one of the things that comes to mind for me is the impact on college student retention. So many of our college students are coming to college with financial aid packages, specifically federal funding. So they would receive, for example, a federal check at the beginning of the semester. And we’re seeing through research that more and more students are taking the money from their federal checks, and instead of paying for their bills in college, they may be using the money for gambling activities. And so what can happen there is that students may lose money. They may start chasing losses to keep gambling more and more to try and win back what they lost. The financial aid money goes away, and that results in stopping out and dropping out of college. So this is a real issue, not only for us as prevention and intervention practitioners. It’s an issue for college presidents. It’s an issue for it for administrators, they need to pay attention to it, because colleges are a place where there’s unique risk and and Lindsay mentioned, you mentioned athletics, not only are our students more and more betting on the outcomes of games, but they’re betting on the outcomes of specific athletes and their performance within a game that, in turn, places a mental health risk on the student athlete, because the student can be at risk of getting harassed, which causes anxiety, depression, all kinds of consequences. So it’s, it’s, it’s really fraught with a number of different issues that come to light as we think of college students. And then one more thing I want to mention is that there is a an a burgeoning now of what we call eSports. We at the University at Albany have one of the first Esports teams in the country and really is is a leading performer throughout the world. And when that program was starting, we we began to think in our counseling center, how would this impact gambling and eSports? Just like other sports, is an area where gambling can take place. Esports is essentially doing sports activities through video games and the like.

Cindy Clouner
Those are such good points, Dolores and and I’m glad you brought up the piece around student athletes, because I think you know, outside of the change in technology, that is kind of allowing the way people gamble to change. I think that’s been one of the most dramatic shifts that we’ve seen when it comes to how we used to think about gambling and how it’s how gambling behaviors are affecting college students. Now, you know it is between the increase in sports betting and the increase in access to college students through social media platforms. Of course, you know, with n, i l students, athletes are more incentivized to monetize their themselves as a brand and put themselves out there, which then certainly increases their visibility to people and and we see a lot of students talking about how, you know, receiving really vile, awful messages from people because they didn’t perform well. So I want to mention that the NCAA has a campaign out that can help, that is really around, you know, thinking twice before you before you can send those types of messages and harass student athletes. I know there’s some states that have have campaigns out in Ohio, they’ve been real, a leader in a lot of the problem gambling work, and they also have a student athlete focused campaign that is intended for for gamblers to prompt them to think twice about how they’re seeing student athletes as people and and certainly there’s been policy that has influenced that as well. So a lot of the those bets about specific instances or specific players, are known as prop bets, and a number of states have banned prop betting for college teams. But what that looks like across states that have done that is different. Here in Ohio that has been a. A law for a while that you cannot bet on a specific student athlete. It within college within college sports. But you know, our center is at Ohio State, so we’re a big athletic institution, and while folks in Ohio cannot place prop bets on our student athletes at Ohio State. That doesn’t stop folks at the other states across the country who allow prop bets or allow prop betting on college athletes that are not within their state. It doesn’t stop them from doing that. So even folks, even our student athletes, in states that have those laws, still can experience those negative outcomes from harassment? Yeah,

Keith Edwards
well, I’m just learning so much from all of you. I’m you know, I think I came in looking at this and the shifting context and concerns, and you’re just putting so many more things that I hadn’t even thought of. So I really appreciate that, and I think many of our listeners might be the same. So, so so we’ve got the shifting context, which is shifting how college students gamble. Let’s talk a little bit about what student affairs professionals can do to help navigate this. Obviously, we’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle, but there probably are some things that we can do. You’re all in the realm of prevention and intervention. So Lindsay, let’s begin with you. What suggestions would you have for student affairs professionals to help students navigate

Lindsey Mortenson
this well, my, my, my, my first thought is just to get really curious about this issue, because it’s a big learning curve. One second is to engage students in any way possible, and I mean not only in the counseling center and in the medical context, but also through their intellect. I would say many students I work with may not approach, you know, mental health issues directly. They’ll often approach it indirectly by asking about a friend or through research projects. And so one of the things that we’ve been really trying to build the University of Michigan is the participation of students in our research enterprise, and what we call applied analytics, not just as research subjects, but because they bring a perspective and and a youth to the work that’s that’s really critical, so that we challenge our own assumptions. What? And another that comes to mind is there’s, there’s a new gambling screen. I don’t think it’s been validated in this population yet, or at least the paper hasn’t been published. But there’s a center at the Eastern Carolina University called the gambling research and policy initiative that has on their website something called the emerging adult gambling screen. And I know how challenging it is, just from a time perspective, in a clinical encounter, to deploy more screeners and more measures, but I do think we ought to be thinking about screening what we know, and this we know from the little bit of research that was out there before legalized sports betting and in recent years, which is that you know younger men really are at higher risk for at risk gambling, problematic gambling and gambling disorder. And so I really think we ought to be thinking about bringing some of the best minds, you know, faculty, staff and students, to this issue of screening those students who are at at highest, the highest risk and in novel settings. It doesn’t have to be in a clinical setting. It can be in a fraternity house. It can be at an Esports event. I’m so glad Dolores mentioned that because eSports, you know, the gambling, especially sports gambling companies, are so focused on customer acquisition, that the number of opportunities for kind of frictionless betting in game, borrowing in game betting is just proliferating in some of these contexts that really are kind of a black box to those of us who don’t do things like eSports. So really getting curious engaging students, I think, is a really big part of what I would recommend for my own staff, but for student affairs professionals and faculty, and really the other folks who are on the front line, that’s not just student affairs professionals. Affairs professionals, but it’s also other advisors, graduate student instructors, some of the the folks who really are on the front lines of mental health, even though maybe they don’t always want to be or not prepared for that, a lot of topics can emerge in office hours. So I think education broadly has to be a big part of the the effort,

Cindy Clouner
Lindsey, I’m glad you gave Dr Michelle Malkin screening a shout out the emerging adult gambling screening. I had the privilege of hearing her speak at the National Council on Problem Gambling conference just last month, and she shared about how she shared their research. Question and that it is a validated screening, and it’s been found to be more effective at identifying students who are engaging in not just students, because it isn’t just a college specific it is emerging adults, but those that are engaging in harmful gambling behaviors than some of the more traditional screening tools for the reasons that you mentioned earlier that they just haven’t been targeting the behaviors that our college students are oftentimes engaging in. So Dr Malkin screening uses the first part of the Rutgers gambling screening protocol, which comes from Dr Leah nauert And what deal and a screening tool that we’ve encouraged campuses to to utilize is that it actually breaks down all of those activities, those gambling activities, and and asks them, not, have you gambled in the last 30 days. But have you done, you know, just like Dolores has mentioned, have you done these specific activities? And that terminology is just so important if we really want to get accurate and accurate understanding of the gambling behaviors among college students right now?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that’s great, and we’ll get a link to that ECU center and access to all of that. And I’m glad you nerded out there and dropped a whole bunch of names. That was fantastic. Dolores, you mentioned in the opening that you’ve got decades as a student affairs professional and now a faculty member, what would you suggest for your student affairs colleagues that we might be able to do to help students navigate? Sure, I’m happy

Speaker 1
to share what we’re doing at the University, and I’m sure what many campuses are doing, but perhaps in other spaces that don’t yet involve addressing gambling, but can be easily applied. We take a comprehensive public health informed framework when we address any type of substance use, do mental health promotion work, do suicide prevention and address any type of risk. So what that means is that we look at the entire population and support the health and well being of the population. We engage in early intervention, and we make sure that students have access to treatment, referral and consultation services if they’ve already been identified as having issues or problems in any particular area. So in the in the universal prevention area for the entire population, what we’ve done is a health education campaign around gambling. We called it the Red Flag Campaign. And so we know that gambling in itself is is not a problem, but it can become a problem. So we teach students to identify when it might become a problem for them and what, what healthy and non problematic gambling activities might look like. We also engage in what we call a social norms campaign, and that is that we say that most of our students engage in healthy behaviors and don’t engage in risk behaviors. We don’t tell them not to engage in the risk behaviors, because then the social norms wouldn’t work, but we prevent accurate data on the fact that our the majority of our population is engaging in healthy behaviors in terms of early intervention. What we have developed under a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is a peer navigation program. That is, we take peers with lived experience reflecting the rich diversity on our campus and who may have had experienced this with gambling substance use or mental health concerns, and we actually train them to do the screening, similar to those that Lindsay and and Cindy have mentioned and and then they engage in a brief intervention using a technique called motivational interviewing, and encourage students to move forward toward change. And whatever that might look like. It may be reducing gambling, it may be going for help in a campus or a community agency and the The nice thing about peers is that they’re very powerful, where students wouldn’t necessarily come and talk to a professional, they may talk to a peer. Now we’re not duplicating services to address gambling on our on our campus that are provided by professionals, because they do great services, but our peers are a link to get students who are least likely to access services in a timely, income and culturally responsive manner. They help facilitate the connection to the professionals, which is really, really great. We’ve gotten a lot of positive. Feedback from students in terms of the fact that they feel listened to and in terms of the fact that they have followed up with interventions to address any problem gambling that they may be experiencing. And of course, we have the treatment and referral services. We have a student health center, a counseling center, a health promotion office, and all of those, all of those offices fit into the picture to provide a comprehensive way to address gambling as well as other behaviors. Because, you know, honestly, when we’re addressing gambling behavior, we also are helping students address perhaps substance use or their mental health, because many times those things occur together, we have data suggesting that a large percentage of our students who engage in problem gambling or who are identified as engaging in problem gambling, also are having issues with alcohol misuse, cannabis misuse, tobacco use, as well as other types of risks. So we’re not just helping one thing. We’re helping many things when we when we intervene and use a comprehensive public health framework.

Keith Edwards
Love it. Love it. I know Cindy, you jumped in here earlier. Anything you want to add about what student affairs professionals can

Cindy Clouner
do? Yeah, I think just being aware of the issue is is such a big first step. There’s so much opportunity for education right now because of all the reasons that people we’ve already talked about, students just don’t even realize that some of the things that they’re doing are considered gambling and and, you know, the gambling activities in and of themselves, there isn’t anything wrong with that, right? There are a lot of people who can engage in some of these activities that we’ve talked about without experiencing any harms from them. So I do want to make sure that we we mentioned that but, but our college students and young adults are at just such an increased risk for experiencing those harms that we really have an obligation to ensure that this issue is woven into the work we do in some way in and a big reason for that is what Dolores just mentioned, those coexisting issues when it comes to substance misuse and mental health, because our students who are engaging in high risk gambling activities and experiencing problematic gambling are most at risk of experiencing these other mental health, behavioral health issues as well. I think it can feel overwhelming for our folks, because they’re asked to do a lot with very little. Oftentimes, the people who are tasked with doing this work have a are wearing so many hats that they’re about to fall off their head. And so it feels like, well, how can I just take on this one more thing? And so that’s when some of the work that the center is trying to do is to help ease that lift for folks through Dr Dolores Cimini has been so valuable in the work that we’ve been doing with the center and bringing together subject matter experts so that we can better understand how we can support campuses and building readiness and capacity to address this issue and developing some turnkey resources and tools so that they can strengthen their ability to assess the issue. And because that’s that’s a huge gap that we have right now, we’ve talked a lot about assessing the issue from a student perspective and whether or not they’re engaging in problematic behaviors. But a big reason why this has been an issue on campuses that problem gambling folks have recognized but our campus folks haven’t, is because we just don’t ask the question. So when people say, well, gambling is a big issue among this this age group, we’re like, no, but we don’t know that it’s not we just don’t have any data to tell us one way or the other, and we’re so data driven. So that’s one of the challenges. Is, is, is that one of the things that folks can do is embedding questions to help understand what is the issue on your campus? How many students are engaging in these behaviors and what is their perception of harm? Because those data points are also valuable when it comes to identifying the the appropriate interventions for your campus as well.

Keith Edwards
I really appreciate that, that framing, and I really appreciate Dolores, you framing, this is not another thing on top of the 37 things. But how do we integrate this all in and see the interconnections and you all have tied this to student financial aid and debt. You’ve tied it to mental health and well being you tall to college sports, you’ve tied it to so many different things and the secondary effects. So this has been incredibly helpful. We’ve even proved that the University of Michigan and Ohio State can play nicely together here. So I really appreciate that Lindsay and Cindy great role modeling. We are running out of time, and the podcast is called Student Affairs now, and we always like to end by asking, What are you thinking about? Troubling or pondering now? What is sort of with you now that might be related to this topic or another. We’d also love to invite you to share where folks can connect. With you so Dolores, we’ll start with you. What are you pondering troubling or thinking about now? And if folks want to connect with you, where might they be able to do that?

Speaker 1
So what I’m thinking about now is in terms of gambling. We really need to work on continuing to get a better handle on the prevalence of gambling nationally among college students. And there are tools that are out there, as Cindy and Lindsay mentioned, that are going to help us do that, because we really need to, as a first step, get an assessment of what’s going on before we can actually be able to respond. And then also take the knowledge that we have in the area of substance use and mental health and addressing other types of risk behaviors, and seeing how much is already there that we can apply to gambling and how we might streamline what we’re doing so we’re not doing tons of extra work just learning from what we what we have made progress in already. So that’s what I am thinking about, and I am happy to talk with people more about anything that I’ve discussed, and particularly the peer navigation program, which has a lot of promise, in my view. And folks can feel free to email me, and I believe my email address would be on the website for the podcast, or you can or it’s D, simini, D, C, I m, I N, i@albany.edu

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Thank you. Dolores, Cindy, what’s with you now? And where can folks connect with you?

Cindy Clouner
Yeah. So I, as I mentioned at the very beginning, I started my career in community based prevention, and so it’s been really interesting seeing where these the paths intersect between community and higher ed. And the problem gambling space is one place where community folks have been doing this work for so long, and where our Higher, higher ed folks can really learn a lot from them, and also lean into resources that are existing, because many states have campaigns and resources that you can tap into that are ready made. And so this lift doesn’t have to be as heavy for you as you’re doing this work. And so that’s one of the things I’m thinking about, is, is how we can help encourage folks while, while we’re working on developing some campus specific resources, look beyond our campus walls to see who else is in our local community that might be doing this work, and who at the state is doing this work. And the National Council on problem gambling, their website lists all of their state affiliates. And so you can I think there’s about 38 of them in the country, and so you can see if your state is one of those. And that’s a great place to get connected for resources. If you’re interested in continuing the conversation, conversation, certainly reach out to me by email, or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Thank you. And Lindsay, you brought us all together here. How would you like to conclude us here about what you’re with now and where folks might want to connect with

Lindsey Mortenson
you. Yeah, thanks, Keith. So LinkedIn is a great place to find me, so just send me a message or connect that way. Two things that I’m thinking about troubled by pondering. One, I just want to underscore something Dolores and Cindy both mentioned, which is the intersectionality of gambling. I think it’s absolutely with addiction and substance use, with ADHD and procrastination, which is like the universal concern that so many students have in college, excessive technology and online use. Many students are actually using technology and online more than they want to be. I think loneliness and belonging are universal struggle for many students, and I worry a lot about gambling and the gamification of everything on phones being another way of escaping and withdrawing from the world around students. So I think keeping that intersectionality in mind with all of those things, and with men’s health, in particular, men’s mental health is top of mind for me. And the last thing I’ll say is, you know, if you’ve listened to this podcast, then you may not actually know more than your colleague at your university, because it’s such a fast moving topic. And so what’s coming to mind at the moment is this idea of like tri directional education or management, which is something I talk a lot about at work, which is we often think of supervision and management and education of those who report to us. But I think if we can think about taking some of this information as fast as it’s moving and communicating it to our colleagues across the organization, but also up to our leaders and our senior leaders. As Dolores mentioned university leadership. You know, state leadership, for those of us in state universities, the generational divide is so great that I worry that people just don’t have this issue on their radar. Don’t have the basic vocabulary that we don’t have shared language. Or vernacular measures. We all just need to be talking about this a little bit more kind of in every direction.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, terrific. And if folks want to connect with you, LinkedIn is the best place to do that. Yeah, that’s great, awesome. Well, thanks to all three of you so much for your expertise and your wisdom and your insights and really expanding the conversation like I shared, really providing a lot more context about what is going on in the the landscape around what’s going on for college students and how student affairs professionals can engage with this has been incredibly helpful. Thanks to all of you for your leadership in your in this space and for joining us today. I just want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode, evolve and Huron higher education leaders are facing unprecedented challenges, uncertainty and attacks. Many are understandably feeling overwhelmed and near burnout, yet yearning to make a powerful difference for students, their organizations and all of us. Evolve is a program that I lead, along with my colleagues, doctors, Brian Rao and Don Lee. It’s an executive coaching program to empower leaders like you to release fear, gain courage and take transformative action to unleash your leadership potential for social change. It’s a three month coaching program offering individual and group coaching as well as intentional and curated curriculum to maximize impact. For our busiest senior leaders visit us to learn how you can be our next cohort and are considered evolve for your senior leadership team and Huron. Huron collaborates with colleges and universities to create sound strategies, optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Huron promotes institutional resilience in higher education. For more information, you can visit them at go.hcg.com/now as always, a huge shout out to our producer, Nat ambrosey, who makes us all look and sound good, and we love your support for these conversations that really expand our perspective and our knowledge and our ability to work effectively with students. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and to our weekly newsletter, where you get the newest episode every week on Wednesdays. I’m Keith Edwards, thanks again to the fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you all. Bye.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07448481.2025.2503840

https://gamblingresearch.ecu.edu

Home

• Direct link to State Affiliates: https://www.ncpgambling.org/about-us/state-affiliates/ 

Home

https://www.collegegambling.org

Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery: https://hecaod.osu.edu/ 

Rutgers Gambling  Screening Protocol: https://socialwork.rutgers.edu/centers/center-gambling-studies/tools-researchers-clinicians 

NYT Article referenced: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html 

Universities and Gambling Partnerships

NCAA Draw the Line campaign: https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2024/3/15/draw-the-line-on-sports-betting.aspx 

More Than a Bet- Ohio’s Campaign related to Student Athletes: https://morethanabet.org/ 

Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Betting

Losing Big

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10447318.2024.2346690#d1e205

Public Health Advocacy Institute

Gambling

Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA)

https://www.umass.edu/seigma/homepage