For some college students, midterm week calls for extra caffeine.
By 1 p.m. Thursday, around 150 Marquette students had already made their way to the corner of 13th and Wisconsin Ave., where music was blasting from, to receive free coffee and donuts.
Parked in the afternoon sunshine on the grassy area was a Ferla Coffee Bike, with Timothy Rabolt at the helm handing out free Anodyne cold brew on tap, along with students’ choice of non-dairy milk and a variety of self-serve flavored syrups.
This barista serves up something more than just caffeinated beverages and sweet treats, though. Rather, he uses the coffee bike to raise awareness of substance use recovery.
Rabolt is the manager of Marquette’s Collegiate Recovery Program, which has been working this year to offer on-campus recovery support. The program hosts weekly meetings, special events and coaching sessions for students wanting to pursue substance use recovery at the same time as their college education.
Rabolt said he bought the Ferla bike a few weeks ago to take a different approach—subtle, not pushy—to advertising the recovery program to Marquette students.
“People come up and they’re excited because it’s free coffee, and we had donuts, but it’s not a grab-and-go,” Rabolt said. “They have to wait a little bit, so then they’re maybe reading the sign or looking at the flyers we have.”
The flyers are conveniently located next to the napkins and offer information about when and where recovery meetings take place, who the program is for and other general pieces of insight.
Rabolt believes raising awareness organically by handing out coffee and donuts will cause students and staff to see the Collegiate Recovery Program and associate positive feelings with it. He said he has received dozens of inquiries about the program since starting his work with the coffee bike.
“I’m trying to push the boundaries a little bit now,” Rabolt said. “In the beginning, it was so informative and professional, and then I thought, what if we just started operating not like a university office and see what happens?”
Rabolt’s inspiration came from other universities whose recovery programs similarly used bikes to hand out free coffee and even Narcan in some cases. With the help of some donor funds gifted to the program, he was able to bring this idea to life at Marquette.
“I was like, ‘What happens if we did that concept but turned the dial up and do it in a way that’s louder?’” Rabolt said. “This is loud, I mean literally. You’ve got music going and everyone’s heads are turning.”
One of Rabolt’s goals for the Collegiate Recovery Program at the start of the semester was to get as many students as possible to lean into the program and the opportunities it offers. So far, Collegiate Recovery has hosted several special events like a Recovery Month Picnic and Recovery Day Celebration and will be involved in the upcoming “Oct-Sober Fest” on Oct. 25.
Rabolt has been out on the 13th and Wisconsin Ave. corner with his bike four times so far this semester, working to organically and subtly raise awareness for the program’s events and general resources promoting substance use recovery. He said he hopes to make it out one more time before the weather gets worse.
Updates on when Rabolt will be outside with the coffee bike can be found on the Collegiate Recovery Program’s Instagram page.
