This weekend the University will host its annual Athletic Prevention Programming and Leadership Education conference with the hope of fostering communication among student-athletes regarding substance abuse prevention.
Representatives from 40 colleges and universities are expected to attend APPLE. Each school will have four to six representatives, two of which will be student-athletes.
According to conference co-director Susan Bruce, the main purpose of the APPLE conference, sponsored and funded by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is to "share with other institutions around the country the model that U.Va. developed for substance abuse prevention for athletic teams."
Bruce said she hopes those schools will then be able to follow the University's example to develop and implement their own substance abuse programs.
"One of the exciting things about the conference is that many of the attendees will be student-athletes," Bruce said. "The students have great ideas."
Bruce added that another main goal of the conference is to empower attendees and promote self-governance among student-athletes.
The three keynote speakers at the conference will include Travis Apgar, associate dean of students at Cornell University.
Apgar, who spoke at last year's conference, will speak primarily about hazing this year. He said he plans to discuss the impact hazing has on the mental health of individual students-athletes.
Apgar noted that many students come into the university athletic sphere having previously experienced some form of hazing.
"We know that a large percentage [of college athletes] have already had [hazing] in high school," Apgar said.
This weekend, for the first time, there will also be an APPLE conference held in Phoenix, Ariz.
"Having [another] conference on the West Coast will allow West Coast schools to attend the conference [without paying as much for travel]," Bruce said.
Although roughly one-third of the schools attending the Charlottesville conference are new, many school representatives are returning to APPLE from previous years.
"It says something about the quality of the conference that [returning schools] are willing to bring back new students and gather new ideas," Bruce said.
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