Oxford, Mississippi, was paralyzed by an epic ice storm in late January. That’s when Daniel Durkin and his wife received a call from an Ole Miss student asking whether they were okay and if they needed anything.
The student is also the president of his fraternity. As he was helping the Durkins clean up their yard, an interesting question was posed.
“I asked him, ‘How many of your brothers do you think have a gambling problem right now?’ and his answer was 80%,” Durkin recalled during an exclusive interview with CasinoBeats on Thursday.
Durkin (pictured below) reiterated that he was talking about problem gambling and not an overall percentage of those members making bets. The answer remained the same.
The fraternity forces pledges to abstain from all social media until they are officially welcomed as brothers, which has produced unintended consequences.
“You’re not allowed on Instagram,” Durkin said. “You’re not allowed on Facebook. You’re not allowed on anything until you become a member. So, what’s happened is that these young men have replaced their social media time with… guess what?”
Gambling apps. The frat president also conceded that some of his brothers had started booking action on campus.
It’s the ‘Wild West’ for College Bettors Across the U.S.
Durkin, an associate professor of social work, was part of a task force that led to the creation of the Center on Collegiate Gambling at the University of Mississippi.
A gambling expert visited Ole Miss about two years ago, and Durkin began to realize just how dire the situation was becoming at colleges across the country.
“He explained how the apps worked,” Durkin said. “It’s different from alcohol and drugs in one way, because your bartender doesn’t show up at your house and try to get you to drink, right?
“But you could be sitting home on a Sunday, you could be down 300 bucks, and you’ll get a notification from your app saying, ‘Hey, we’ve noticed you’re down. Would you like to do this 3-team parlay that you for sure will lose?”
The meteoric rise of prediction markets has helped introduce sports betting to 18-year-olds, another concerning development for Durkin, who teaches in a state without legal sports betting.
“It’s the wild west right now,” Durkin said. “I told our chancellor recently, ‘The next time you’re at a sporting event when you’re leaving, just keep your mouth shut and listen.’ You will hear groups of young men talking about their gambling.
“When I ask my students in class, ‘How many of you have friends with a gambling problem?’ about half will raise their hands.”
Pressing Issues of the Day
The remainder of our wide-ranging interview with Durkin has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CasinoBeats: How are college students uniquely vulnerable to sports betting harms?
Durkin: Your brain isn’t fully developed until about your mid-twenties, and one of the last things to develop is the prefrontal cortex that controls decision-making, impulse, and all that. It alarmed me because I realized that our population was very vulnerable to what was going on.
CB: How do problem gambling cases compare on campuses versus the general population?
Durkin: In the general population, we usually see about 1-2% of people developing pretty serious problems. In our population, that’s probably going to jump to 6-8% due to developmental issues. Then, there’s all the other stuff (students are exposed to) on a college campus. I mean, every time you turn on the TV, there’s a gambling ad, right?
CB: Is the center’s role to discourage gambling entirely or just make it more responsible?
Durkin: We know social control just isn’t very effective, so we take a harm reduction approach. No, we’re not telling people not to gamble, but we want them to be educated about it, and to know how it works, and understand that gambling’s really just for entertainment, guys. It’s not extra income. Gambling can be fun if you do it responsibly.
CB: On a personal level, how has working on this changed the way you think about gambling culture?
Durkin: I worry about it because it’s a relatively new product when you think about it, and I think there just aren’t enough safeguards in place. When we had that gambling expert come and talk, one of the things I said to him was, ‘Hold on a minute, you go into a bar, and you’re falling down drunk, and they serve you, they’re legally liable, right?’ It’s called a duty to care. Why does the gambling industry not have that same duty?
CB: It’s a good point.
Durkin: They know who the problem gamblers are, right? Every legal bet is recorded. They know who they are. Why do they not have a duty to care when someone is developing a problem? They should stop serving them. Well, you could self-exclude. Interestingly, one of my students had a gambling problem, and he wanted to self-exclude, so I met with him, and we walked through the self-exclusion process. It ain’t easy. All they keep asking you is if you’re sure, and yeah, that’s interesting.
CB: The center is billed as a first-of-its-kind initiative. What do you hope other universities will take from this model?
Durkin: I’m not sure because part of the reason why we’re doing this — and I don’t expect other people to really have the resources to do it — is that there’s basically no federal money for gambling research. I don’t get why there isn’t, so that was part of the reason why we felt there was a need for the center. But we’re going to have to be really creative with how we fund it because having no federal money for research is a really big deal.
CB: How will you judge the center’s success where students are concerned?
Durkin: I hope that it plants a seed in them so that if they do develop a problem, or if one of their friends develops a problem, we feel like we’ve done a good job (educating them on what to do). If they or a friend has a mental health problem, or an alcohol problem, or a drug problem, we feel our students know what to do in that situation. We’re not there with gambling yet. We know lots of students have problems right now, but they haven’t been coming into the counseling center. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do in that regard.
