College tries to address lure of gambling

When Towson University students pick up their phones on campus and open a designated app, they may see an ad seeking to teach them about responsible gambling.

The in-app banner ad, sent at random, advises them to “PAWS”: “Plan ahead, Always know your limits, Wait to play again/wager again, Stop while you’re ahead.”

With this marketing campaign, Towson is stepping in front of a trend: explosive growth of sports betting on college campuses.

In studies conducted from 2007 to 2014, researchers found that 75 to 80 percent of college students had gambled in the past year.

A grant from the National Council on Problem Gambling has helped the Baltimore-area college create what it hopes will become a national model for what a university can do to help its students.

“The hope and the goal (is) that we can really develop some incredible work that sets the standard for other universities to tackle this topic ,” said Jaclyn Webber of the university’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Prevention Center.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the problem gambling council, said his organization selected Towson for the grant because “we believe that preventing high-risk populations was the area that had the least amount of funding and could make the biggest impact.”