U of C becomes first post-secondary school in Alberta to sign Recovery-Friendly Campus Pledge
By Andreea Timis, October 16 2024—
On Sep. 10, the University of Calgary signed the Recovery-Friendly Campus (RFC) Pledge — an initiative that aims to provide optimal practices for campus students, staff and faculty in recovery. The pledge was developed by the UCalgary Recovery Community (UCRC) and Recovery on Campus Alberta (ROC) — both founded by UCalgary associate professor Dr. Victoria Burns — and signed by U of C’s provost and vice president academic Dr. Sandra Davidson at the UCalgary Recovery Community (UCRC) Hub.
The Gauntlet spoke with ROC program coordinator Chelsie Graham about the goals of the pledge going forward which include prioritizing recovery by creating and sustaining recovery programs to support all types of recovery pathways within campus communities province-wide.
“The recovery-friendly campus pledge is a series of eight criteria that we are asking post-secondaries to adhere to in order to create a more inclusive and supportive program for students, faculty and staff on their campus,” said Graham. “The criteria is specific but respects culture. So we ask schools to take a look at the criteria and see how they can best work each point at their university.”
The criteria of the pledge is mainly centered around creating all-recovery pathways programming for staff and students, raising awareness for and normalizing recovery by implementing recovery-friendly spaces and events on campus.
Graham spoke about the imperativeness of signing the pledge and its impact on the campus community.
“[It’s] significant because it means that the university is poised to really dive into creating a supportive and inclusive space for people who are experiencing addiction from substance use or behaviours and for those who are seeking recovery because universities are traditionally recovery-threatening environments,” Graham explained.
In addition to the large drinking and cannabis culture within post-secondaries, an increase in stigmatized behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm has also been observed.
“[The pledge] helps to destroy some of that stigma because we have a lot of people who are afraid to even disclose that they’re in recovery,” Graham explained. “They’re worried about their reputation or losing their jobs, so we’re hoping that by signing this pledge we can show that these things are protected.”
The pledge signing has encouraged people with lived experience to speak out about their journeys in recovery and what this new initiative could mean in the future. Graham also outlined that the pledge’s all-inclusive criteria caters to individuals in different types of recovery to support all types of pathways and individual recovery processes.
“One thing we found is that recovery is traditionally understood as abstinence or sobriety. We support addiction identities like eating disorders, self-harm and Internet pornography. A lot of these things are not abstinence-based recoveries,” said Graham.
Graham notes that recovering from an addiction depends on the individual and that there is a spectrum of treatments that should be considered. “Abstinence might also not work for everybody, so we believe in everything from harm reduction all the way up to abstinence, and we support everything in between,” Graham said.
The hope is that increased visibility will allow people to see that these are global problems within post-secondary institutions and help further reduce stigmatization around the topic of recovery.
More information about the recovery pledge can be found on the ROC website.