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Show AggieLife Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Page 6 Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com Drunk driving experience comes to USU By NATALIE CURTIS staff writer In conjunction with National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week (NCAAW), the Save a Life Tour will be coming to USU at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22. The tour’s campaign, held in the TSC Ballroom, will be promoting alcohol awareness with drunk-driving simulators, videos and information. Student Health Services prevention specialist Ryan V. Barfuss said, “This is a highimpact awareness program. We want students to have a visual experience about alcohol awareness so it will really have a lasting effect.” USU has never had a DUI simulator, he said, but it will be effective because it is a hands-on event. He said the simulator shows students what it is like to drive a car with a certain blood-alcohol content. Savealifetour.com stated, “Our multimillion dollar drinking-and-driving simulators are the only simulators in the nation that give participants a completely realistic, sober perspective on the effects of driving while intoxicated.” The purpose of its campaign is about awareness, Barfuss said, because students need to be more educated about alcohol – not just about drinking and driving but also about alcohol poisoning, general alcohol use and the difference between low risk and high risk drinking. Barfuss said many people at USU don’t think alcohol is an issue because many people choose not to drink. But the real problems arise, he said, when students are not aware of how alcohol will affect them. “Just because we have low numbers who drink alcohol,” he said, “we are still not immune to death, drinking problems and students getting in trouble.” Barfuss said the majority of alcoholrelated problems he finds among students are impairment problems, which affect relationships, jobs, school and fights and they can also result in injuries. “Alcohol affects everybody,” he said, “not just the people who drink.” Even though one student died at USU last year from alcohol poisoning, he said, it had an impact on everyone. Alcohol has also turned into a huge social problem, he said, because it affects the nation’s health care. “But we can’t just blame those that drink or have a problem with alcohol,” he said. “Everyone needs to worry about it and be more educated.” Barfuss said he thinks the Save a Life Tour campaign will make a difference on campus. After researching the statistics and facts, he said, he found there is a definite need for more awareness of the effects of alcohol. In one year, out of college students ages 18-24, Collegedrinkingprevention.gov stated, 1,700 die from alcohol-related accidents, 2.1 million drive under the influence, 25 percent report negative academic consequences from drinking and more than 97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. Barfuss said there is not a lot publication on sexual assaults, but studies show alcohol is involved with 75 percent of rape and assault cases. He said he hopes students understand the statistics resulting from improper alcohol use and are influenced by the Save a Life Tour. Savealifetour.com stated, “We bring a shocking approach to alcohol awareness with a tragic video and personal stories of the loss of loved ones by peers.” Barfuss said the Save a Life Tour has visited military academies and colleges and wanted to come to USU. The Student Health Services has collaborated with the Associated Students of Utah State University, USU Housing Services, the University Inn and Utah Highway Safety, he said, which all helped to make the event possible. “It costs quite a bit of money to have the Save a Life Tour come,” he said, “but it helps to have groups supporting us.” Other events are also scheduled for NCAAW. Information booths from Student Health Services will be in the basement of the Taggart Student Center Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Students can pick up information and participate in an alcohol awareness quiz for a variety of prizes with a grand prize of an iPod Shuffle. Friday, Oct. 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. students can come to the TSC Sunburst Lounge and participate in a beer-goggle obstacle course, get refreshments and win prizes. For more information on NCAAW, contact the Student Health Services at 797-1660. “I’m very excited for this week,” Barfuss said. “October is alcohol awareness month, and we want to make a big push to get a lot of information out because education really can make a difference.” – natalie.c@aggiemail.usu.edu Professor will leave you in stitches By CASSIDEE CLINE staff writer Not many women can say they didn’t, at one point, walk out of their mother’s closet with a pair of her black pumps and a suit jacket three times their size. Playing dress up is almost as natural to any women’s childhood memory as learning how to walk. Parents’ decisions and actions often influences what their kids grow up to be. One professor said her parents were a prominent part in how she became the master seamstress she is today. Nancy Hills has been a professor at USU for the past 20 years and has helped out with and designed a lot of the costumes students see worn on stage. Hills said she has been sewing since she was a little girl growing up in San Mateo, Calif. She said her mother taught her how to sew. “Both Mother and Dad encouraged us to follow our passions and do things we really loved,” Hills said. She practiced her skills on creating doll clothes when she was professor nancy hills has been teaching at USU for the past 20 years. She helps with the designing and creation of many costumes students wear during performances and also takes students around Europe with USU’s Study Abroad program. PETE P SMITHSUTH photo little and then creating her own wardrobe in high school. Hills now uses this skill in her day-to-day life to design creative and sometimes elaborate pieces for actors. Hills acquired an undergraduate degree in performance and said she realized the whole performing world was something she couldn’t really sink her teeth into. Though performing wasn’t her thing, she said she had a knack for sewing. “When it came to graduate school I redirected my passions and moved toward design,” Hills said. Even though the performing didn’t work out, she said her past experiences on the stage helps her ability to design costumes. “You can’t understand what an actor goes through,” Hills said, “unless you have been in their shoes, literally. Actors are story tellers,” I’m just telling the story from the visual way the story is personified. The actor is the main focus of the story telling, but we (costume designers) are here to enhance it and give the audience directions.” Being an artist of needle and cloth, Hills said she gets inspiration and ideas from anywhere. “I can see a painting. I can walk through the woods where the trees are covered with icicles. Crumpled leaves on the floor of the forest can be a really intriguing sort of pattern that will spark something,” Hills said. Even though Hills’ creativity with patterns and design can be let loose on stage, she said her design is always focused on the show. She said the story is what’s important and finding out how the story can be told with the principles in elements of design. Part of the elements of design is the color chosen for the costume, she said. Hills said colors are what attracts attention and can tell a story. White, for example, will portray innocence or purity. Red portrays vengeance and passion and physiologically draws attention more quickly than anything. “Colors tell stories,” she said. “(The audience) needs to understand the layers behind the play and the themes.” “I’m good at dying and painting fabric,” she said. “I can do things like that, and they’re a good skill to have.” Hills spent six months as a dyer painter for the San Francisco Opera between 1999 and 2000. With the skills she has honed, Hills is working on putting together and designing the play “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” an early comedy by William Shakespeare, for spring semester. This semester she is, for the first time at USU, directing a Japanese fairytale about a one-inch hero called “Issun-boshi.” Hills said she has directed before but not for USU. - See COSTUME, page 7 |