ALCOHOL AWARENESS WEEK BEGINS WITH CAMPAIGN TO FIGHT BINGE DRINKING

Two student leaders on Monday announced a new national campaign in which
college students would encourage their peers to stop abusing alcohol. At the
same time, a coalition of college groups released a set of recommendations
on how campuses can combat binge drinking.

During a news conference here to mark the start of National Collegiate
Alcohol Awareness Week, two members of a peer-education network focusing on
alcohol-abuse prevention launched a new campaign, "Not Here," an effort to
unite students in preventing alcohol-related deaths.

The campaign includes: campus "speak-outs" in which students would voice
their concerns about alcohol abuse and tell their peers that high-risk
drinking is not the norm; public-service announcements that advise students
what to do if a friend has had too much to drink; and "friend cards" that
students can carry in their wallets as a pledge that they will help an
intoxicated friend.

"Students are realizing that they are the ones who need to take action,"
said Stacey Strong, a senior at Hastings College in Nebraska and a trustee
of the BACCHUS and GAMMA Peer Education Network.

The news conference was held by the Inter-Association Task Force on Alcohol
and Other Substance Abuse Issues, a coalition of higher-education
associations, which released a 28-page booklet that included guidelines to
change the drinking culture on campuses, provide comprehensive health
education, and limit advertising of alcoholic beverages on campus.

Many of the guidelines were deliberately left open-ended as a way of
"respecting the appropriateness of each college and university to make
individual decisions about campus life," the booklet says.

Among its general recommendations, the coalition says that colleges should
define binge drinking clearly, hold policy violators accountable for their
behavior, spend money on alcohol education and enforcement, remind students
of their individual responsibility for their actions, and work with students
and local communities to fight alcohol abuse.

The group also offers a "model campus alcohol policy," which simply suggests
that such policies include a "broad but succinct" philosophical statement, a
summary of state and local laws, and institutional rules. Specific
recommendations include prohibiting drinking games at social events and
banning alcohol from recruitment activities, such as fraternity rush.

Although the coalition suggests guidelines that would limit alcohol
advertising on campuses, including at sports events, it doesn't make any
recommendations about whether colleges should bar such advertising.

But Donna E. Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, used the
news conference to reiterate her view that colleges should ban alcohol ads
at sporting events.

"American higher education must break the connection between alcohol and
college sports," said Ms. Shalala, who has called on colleges to bar alcohol
advertising in university publications and athletic facilities and ban
sponsorship of intercollegiate athletics events by alcohol manufacturers.

Checked-by: Don Beck