1997_09 The Daily Collegian September 1997

              THE DAILY
COLLEGIAN
Tuesday, September 30,1997
Opinion
Telephone: (209) 278-5732
Nearby bars giving
colleges bad name
By George A. Hacker and Debra Erenberg
On Aug. 26, 20-year-old Loui¬
siana State University student Ben
Wynne died of alcohol poisoning
after downing too many drinks at a
bar close to campus. In 1996,
Heather Noonan, an 18-year-old
student at Northern Illinois Univer¬
sity, drank heavily at a local bar that
offered Wednesday night,
"Buckbooze" one-dollar shots and
later died in a car crash that also
killed two passengers.
Those tragedies represent a na¬
tionwide problem. All too often,
college-area bars entice students to
get sloshed by offering all-you-can-
drink specials, nickel pitchers, quar¬
ter shots, free beer 'til midnight and
similar drink bargains. Although
most bar owners don't promote
drunkenness, college kids out to get
blasted have little trouble finding a
bar eager to assist them. It's a won¬
der lhat drinking deaths do not oc¬
cur more frequently.
In a 1996 study of 75 college
newspapers, the Center for Science
in the Public Interest found dozens
of ads that can best be described as
open invitations for students to
drink to abandon. The come-ons
included "Bladder Bust Redlight
Specials." "6-10 PM 3 for I
drinks," "Wednesday-ladies drink
free." and "Coin night-Any coin,
any drink," among many others.
The bar ads occupied an average of
34 column inches per newspaper
edition, and more than one-third of
them promoted heavy drinking.
LSU's Daily Reveille, incidentally,
ranked near the top of the survey,
with 90 column inches of bar ads
per issue. Almost all of them lured
students with the promise of cheap
drinks.
Admittedly, ads for bar specials
in student newspapers don't cause
all college drinking problems. Nor
do bartenders who continue to serve
falling-down drunk college stu¬
dents. There are many reasons why
nearly half of all students are binge
drinkers (five drinks in a row for
men; four for women) and one in
five is a frequent binge drinker.
However, the constant reminders
promoting cheap booze as the ticket
to relaxation and fun-in ads, on bul¬
letin boards, fliers, banners, store
signs, etc.-provide substantial sup¬
port for campus environments that
make heavy drinking an integral
element of the college experience.
Those messages increase the
pressure on students to drink by
fostering, especially among inexpe¬
rienced first- and second-year stu
dents, a misperception that frequent
heavy drinking is the norm on cam
pus. With this kind of competition,
it's no surprise so few college pro¬
grams to reduce dangerous student
binge drinking have been success
ful and so many colleges have repu¬
tations as "party schools," deserved
or not.
Deaths among college students
are an unusual consequence of
binge drinking. Heavy drinking,
howler, leads to a variety of se¬
vere problems, which are often
shared with moderate-, light-, and
non-drinking schoolmates. They
include unplanned, unprotected and
unwanted sexual activity; injury;
trouble with police; violence; van¬
dalism; academic failures; drink-
ing-driving crashes; and medical
problems A Harvard University
study revealed at campuses with a
high concentration of binge drink¬
ers, non-drinkers were also at sub¬
stantial risk of alcohol-related
harm, which ranged from having to
baby-sit an intoxicated friend to
being the victim of a sexual assault.
Fortunately, college officials,
parents and community organiza¬
tions have many tools to counter the
predatory marketing practices of
rogue bar operators and reduce the
pressure on young people to drink.
In some communities, "respon¬
sible hospitality councils," which
include most bar owners as well as
Please see DRUNKS, page 3.
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Political party differences not
as big as people make them out
By Hakim Allen	
Living in a society that concen¬
trates, bickers and gripes over who
the president sleeps with instead of
the political implications that
Americans face in regards to the
Mexican bailout which comes from
the pockets of taxpayers, you be¬
gin to wonder about the ways in
which the masses of this country
place their priorities.
At least three times in any given
four year cycle, we find ourselves
caught between the dichotomy of
Democrats or Republicans. Those
of us Who don't simply ignore poli¬
tics may, even more so, find them¬
selves caught in debates that pro¬
claim that one is better than the
other. Obviously oblivious to the
way a true democracy works we ac-
. tually think and argue that there is
a legitimate choice between the two
parties.
The past election posed Repub¬
lican Bob Dole against Democrat
Bill Clinton in a race for who
looked more presidential. It cer¬
tainly wasn't about a serious differ¬
ence in political ideology. China
human relations. Mexican bailout.
NAFTA and many other issues
Clinton and Dole were of the same
mind. Our political system operates
under a two party system which
works as if it were one large party
with some mutable factional line
dividing it down the middle. When
It simply takes a brief
glance at world
politics to realize the
raw elitism of our
political system.
the time comes to vote or register,
one isn't faced with any real choice
between panic*.
It simply takes a brief glance at
world politics to realize the raw elit¬
ism of our political system. With
our current political system there is
no way that an individual who rep¬
resents a pure constituency can at¬
tain any legitimate political power.
Thus, what happens to the anti-
technocrat, what happens to the
evironmelalist. or any other minor
ity political expression? It gets
swallowed up by the two large,
shifty, money hungry parties.
The only way that this will ever
change is to convert our politfcal
system to that of a proportional rep
rcsentation system. This would al¬
low congressional representation to
be distributed based upon the pro¬
portional votes garnered by the
party. If the Green party gets 6 per¬
cent of the vote, then they receive
6 percent of the congressional scats.
Currently that would be 26 House
seats or 32 total congressional seats.
Such representation allows for
the views of our society to be ex¬
pressed clearly and more effec¬
tively. This should be the end of a
government which is for and by the
people. However the onus is upon
us, who make up this society, to
demand fair and equal representa¬
tion of views and ideologies.
Hakim Allen is a philosophy-
major.
Daily Collegian
California State University, Fresno
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The Daily Collegian is pub¬
lished five times a week for and
by the students of California Stale
University, Fresno.
Opinions expressed in the
Collegian are not necessarily
those of the entire Daily Colle¬
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right to edit letters for length and
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