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8 May 2001 - The San Diego Union-Tribune
CSU panel urges offensive against alcohol abuse
Task force backs greater police role

By Samuel Autman

The 23 California State University campuses should team with local law enforcement agencies to aggressively enforce laws on open containers, drinking and driving, keg parties and fake IDs, a statewide task force recommends.

The report from Chancellor Charles Reed's office, which will be discussed next week at the Board of Trustees meeting, recommends broad changes in the system, including one recommendation to ban naming events for alcoholic beverage companies.

Underage drinking on American college campuses has long been an issue. In California, it is illegal for anyone younger than 21 to drink. But according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the age span of 18-21 is the heaviest period of alcohol consumption for most drinkers in the United States.

The CSU Alcohol Policies and Prevention Committee – made up of CSU presidents, faculty and students – was formed in December to examine drinking problems on CSU campuses and to recommend solutions. This followed the alcohol-poisoning death in October of an 18-year-old at Chico State and two near-fatal alcohol poisonings involving SDSU students last fall.

The task force recommended that each campus:

	Develop alcohol policies to be given to new students and parents before they arrive on campus.
	Create university wide alcohol advisory councils to track campus alcohol programs.
	Collect campus alcohol data every two years and report the findings to Reed's office.
	Train faculty advisers, resident advisers, coaches, peers and student affairs professionals to understand and spot alcohol problems in students.
	Remove the names of alcoholic beverage sponsors from campus events. However, alcoholic beverage advertising using trademarks or logos would not be banned from events.

The committee also urged the universities to foster a campus culture that curbs binge drinking, where students, rather than adults, encourage students not to drink. The Chancellor's Office has agreed to provide $25,000 to each campus that finds matching funds to enhance existing prevention programs.

SDSU President Stephen Weber, who was in charge of a subcommittee on enforcement, said several schools gave presentations on their current enforcement strategies. One presentation was on an SDSU program funded by a one-year, $100,000 grant from the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Department.

Under that program, SDSU has teamed with the San Diego police on enforcement operations, resulting in students being cited for underage drinking, fake IDs, public drunkenness and supplying alcohol to minors.

"They will not be the only model, but you can safely say that some of the cooperation going on between SDSU and the San Diego police is an example of some of the things campuses are considering," he said.

Weber said the task force's recommendation on sponsorships does not preclude alcohol advertising at events but would not allow alcohol company names on events such as sports tournaments.

"This is like the Virginia Slims tennis tournament," he said. "You can't even invite someone to this competition without saying Virginia Slims. We don't want to put the events in the hands of alcohol vendors."

Sponsorships aid the school's financially strapped athletic departments.

Anheuser Busch Co. is one sponsor of SDSU events. Banners fly from the View Level at Qualcomm Stadium during football games, and there have been preliminary talks about possible sideline sponsorship for the 2001 season. Miller Brewing Co. has signs at Cox Arena during basketball games and at Tony Gwynn Stadium for baseball games. Beer companies also buy time on SDSU broadcasts.

Michael Kohler, director of corporate sales at SDSU, estimates the university could lose between $75,000 and $100,000 annually should all alcohol-related sponsorship end. "My job is to bring sponsorship dollars into the university," Kohler said. "If (athletic director) Rick Bay told me tomorrow to cease our relationship with those companies, we will. But I haven't been told that to this point. "It's a pretty huge chunk of revenue for us. But if we decided to go in a different direction, we'd have to find the dollars elsewhere."

Shaun Lumachi, head of the California State Student Association and task force member, said students are able to make intelligent decisions. Just because they see advertisements on a stadium wall does not translate into student behavior.

He fears people will misunderstand the committee's recommendation as preaching to students. Instead, the recommendations are intended to help the university create a more uniform policy, he said.

"There is a lot of pressure on the university to do something about the problem of drunk students," he said. "The reality is that all of our students are not drunks. Most are education-focused."

Staff writer Ed Graney contributed to this report.