Penn State students will be holding a public discussion forum tonight at Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, on excessive drinking, proposing three solutions to a serious problem at many universities.
In the forum, titled "Alcohol: Controlling the Toxic Spill," people will sit with a group of about 15 others and wrestle with the issue of excessive drinking, Public Issues Forum of Centre County Co-Chairman David Hutchinson said.
"The purpose of it is to bring those leaders and interested people from the community together in an attempt to bring a serious issue from the back burner to the front burner," said State College Police Department Capt. Dana Leonard, a "co-convener" of the forum.
A Penn State ENGL 202C (Technical Writing) class, in conjunction with the Penn State Learning's Public Writing Initiative, helped to organize the event with information from the Kettering Foundation, Hutchinson said. The foundation sends out books and other materials about issues that students use to frame a local discussion, Hutchinson said.
"We expect that those who attend will come to a better understanding of why people with different viewpoints see the issue in the way that they do, and discover our common ground for moving forward," students from the course wrote in a letter explaining the forum.
These forums, which occur three times a year, examine an issue from at least three different approaches, he said. It was the job of the ENGL 202C students to outline these proposals.
"The first approach is more of a law-enforcement issue," Hutchinson said. "This implies that the way to fix the problem is to make law enforcement stricter."
The second approach, he said, is closer to a medical proposal, which would involve recognizing excessive drinking as a problem and determining ways to deal with it through prevention and treatment programs.
The final approach involves educating people about the dangers of alcohol consumption more intensely, making attempts "to do a better job of educating students from grade school up through college," Hutchinson said.
While the students mapped out three possibilities, audience members should feel free to voice their opinions and make their own suggestions about how to better deal with the severe ramifications of dangerous drinking, Hutchinson said.
"The three approaches are each a different set of solutions, and people can like or not like each of the three," he said. "But we definitely encourage participants to speak up."
The event is sponsored by State College Area School District Community Education, the Centre Daily Times and Schlow Centre Region Library.
