Students to address alcohol abuse at weekend conference
By Staff Writer

Is alcohol part of your weekend plans?

If so, you're definitely not alone. Today and tomorrow, representatives from 30 Michigan colleges, including Albion, will discuss solutions to campus alcohol abuse at a Lansing conference.

The Peer Power College Student Leadership Conference, held at the Holiday Inn, has one goal: finding ways to reduce campus drinking problems.

Those problems include alcoholism, drinking-related injuries, drinking-induced crimes and arrests, and binge drinking.

A Harvard School of Public Health study that found up to 70 percent of students at some campuses said they were "binge drinkers": taking in five or more drinks at a time, according to Monday's Lansing State Journal.

Mara Tynan, Scottsdale, Ariz., senior and BACCHUS president, attended the 1993 and 1994 conferences. She said, "The conference is] very motivational. It's given me the opportunity see we're not the only ones working with these issues."

During last year's conference, Tynan attended an open Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where almost all there were college-aged recovering alcoholics. "It [breaks down] the 'old man stereotype' of an alcoholic," she said.

This year, Albion will send two other BACCHUS representatives - Erika Madaski, Grose Ile senior, and Wendi Mrozinski, Canton senior - to the Lansing conference.