ADVISORY/Southwest Texas State Wins National Award for Program to Reduce Drinking and Driving

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Who:    Southwest Texas State University will receive a $1,000 check
        as a state winner in the annual Drinking and Driving
        Prevention Award, sponsored by AAA Texas and the Higher
        Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention.

What:   Students from Southwest Texas State partnered with students
        from the University of Texas at Austin to produce a video and
        mock trial program entitled "A Night to Remember: The Truth
        About DWI." The video depicts a college student leaving a
        party after having a few drinks. The student is pulled over by
        a state trooper and arrested for DWI. The process, from
        arrest, to consultation with an attorney, and subsequent mock
        trail, is depicted. The goal of the program is to decrease the
        number of drunk driving incidences involving students and to
        educate them about the costs of DWI.

When:   Tuesday, May 15 at 9 a.m.

Where:  The LBJ Student Center at Southwest Texas State.

Why:    Research has regularly found that alcohol consumption and
        drinking and driving at institutions of higher education are
        at startlingly high levels, and trending upwards for some
        categories of students. The Harvard School of Public Health
        found, nationally in 1997, 27.9 percent of students reported
        becoming intoxicated three or more times in the previous 30
        days. That rate was more than a 20 percent increase over the
        22.9 percent intoxication rate in 1993. The proportion of
        frequent binge drinkers rose 6 percent, from 19.5 percent in
        1993 to 20.7 percent in 1997.