COLLEGE SHORTS

Author: Thomas C. Drescher and Caroline S. Stauffer

Colby dining offers alcohol to of age students

Colby College is pursuing a new approach to confront the problem of alcohol abuse on college campuses. It will, in fact, serve beer and wine in its dining halls to students of legal drinking age on select Friday evenings.
The College has also added alcohol-related programming, such as a lecture on Belgian-style beers by the owner of the Allagash brewery, to its calendar of events.
The idea behind this new philosophy is to highlight the social norm of drinking in moderation instead of only focusing on the negative aspects of consumption.
Colby Student Body President Catherine Welch proposed the idea of adding alcohol in low-key and educational settings after returning from a study abroad semester in Nepal where it was normal for her to enjoy the occasional glass of wine or beer.
"What Colby is doing in dining halls is exposing students to the 'true norm' of moderate, social alcohol consumption," said Michael P. Haines, director of the National Social Norm Resource Center at Northern Illinois University. "Such exposure is another way that a 'false norm' (binge-drinking-as-typical) is challenged."
Not all authorities agree.
Henry Wechsler, principal investigator of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study questions the message Colby is sending to students under age 21. "This type of program must simply whet the appetite of the underage students, and remind them that college and alcohol come together," he says.

- InsideHighered.com

Southern students defend accent

According to The Collegiate Times, a student publication at Virginia Tech, southerners are beginning to question the necessity and integrity of accent reduction courses cropping up everywhere below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Martin Childers, program director of a theater in Prestonsburg, Kent., said his establishment offers courses to acting students who, for acting purposes, wish to minimize their southern accents. Childers and others see the courses as a useful tool for improving the marketability of actors who might otherwise be faced with limited opportunities because of their distinctive speech.
Recently, however, students and experts across the southern states have begun to question the validity of accent reduction courses, asserting that they imply a certain inherent inferiority associated with southern speech.
"They should never devalue their heritage and never let anyone else devalue it," said Virginia Tech English Professor Stephen Mooney. "A man who runs from his heritage is not worth the dirt that flies from beneath his feet."
"Why shouldn't we send northerners applying for jobs in the south to reduce their yankee accent?" argued Lindsay Robinson, an interdisciplinary studies major at Virginia Tech.
Childers contends that the courses teach temporary accent modification and are not designed to diminish or cheapen one's heritage.
- U-Wire