Lose The Booze
Should we all be drinking less? At the end of Freshers' Week, with the carpet a completely different shade of sick from last week, this question appears more relevant than ever. However, surely the answer lies not in blind statements of intent, in catchy slogans or funky postcards. The secret to solving any drink problems in Oxford must be to break down the culture of drinking and tackle it head on. In bars throughout the University, the same institutional approach to drinking is applied. It is almost a requirement that all Freshers get horribly drunk in their first week, or football and rugby teams get violently trashed just after a famous victory. Surely the best way to prevent people from getting drunk is not to urge them to think about their drunkennes in a clever and innovative way, but to challenge the set-ups that lead them to drink in the first place. If this anti-alcohol abuse campaign is to be successful and we certainly hope it is, it has to do more than send simple postcards, it has to enter the bars, the pubs and clubs of the town and fight its battle on the frontline.
12th Oct 2000