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Show AggieLife Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Page 7 Spring time equals ring time for some students According our trusty Gregorian calendar and most commercials endlessly pushing clearance sales at Kmart, it is springtime. However, if I could keep a secret with my general reading public, that isn't what I call it. I mean, in this given geographical location of youth, general personal purity and freelance social interaction the world over, this time of year needs a name that supports an underlying theme for the events and emotions most common. So, springtime? No. It's ring time. I have no documented support to substantiate my claim that some demonic bystander has been spiking the water system with corny Jimmy Stewart movies, but I have engaged in enough public couples observation to feel pretty confident that some sort of something has infested our air, waters, dentist waiting rooms and all else, resulting in all kinds of people and pets suddenly feeling comfortable enough with commitment to pure, unadulterated matrimony until death or Jimmy Fallon do them part. In short, people are getting engaged and they are doing it in droves. Ring time, in all of its mass and terror, is upon us. This brings drastic change to a great amount of how the public functions around campus, but not nearly as steeply anywhere as the change it makes in the ever-hallowed pre-professorstarting-class-chat time. This is an immensely pivotal time for students to create enough of a bond so they can dutifully survive class time together — and by dutifully survive, of course, I mean find the ability to openly groan about a group project in the matching key. However, recently the hollowed few minutes has become a water cooler session of kneeling stories, various style plans and hours upon hours of female emotional whimpering. I call it the "Human Pinterest Board," a cavalcade of suggestions and my-aunt-did-that-at-her-weddingand-it-was-so-cutes to make any episode "Dawson's Creek" blush. Take last week. There the 24-27 students — depending on whether or not it was quiz day — sit awaiting our professor to zip in and endow upon us the gift of knowledge, when there sits future wife number one, slumped down and clicking furiously through vibrant firstpoint perspective photographs of table cloths, each click adding another wrinkle to her forehead. Evidently, it turns out the natural motion of marriage is that the emotional strain of finding a mate, courting them, building an impenetrable bond and cornmitting their life for all of eternity and deciding what fabric will dawn the underlings of the edible arrangements is exactly the same even though the duration of time for each event is very different. Cue in future wife two, who, by rule, is significantly closer to the day of rice-tossing as future wife one, and begins the given interaction with some variation of the following phrase: "Oh goodness, cloths are the worst." They then commence into talking about the quality state of tablecloths in relation other required plans. As it stands right now, they are the worst. They SPRING AND WEDDING RINGS go hand-in-hand for some students. DELAYNE LOCKE photo illustration make this known in several words. When then commence to the first word-of-mouth suggestion, which generally stems from some designs some person saw at some event that was easily made from some fabric for some incredible price. She doesn't q uite remember the details but she does remember it being "gorgeous" and "had some baby blue in it." This spawns the Google phase, in which both future wives machete through bookmarked pages and search engines to find some sort of variant of said cloth in hopes, dreams and aspiration that finally, in this cold cruel world full of fabric sample loneliness, perhaps, maybe, possibly, by some whim of the heart, she has found the one. Future wife one has struggles finding it at first, but that won't slow her down, is motivated by her drive for the perfect ceremony and future wife two's constant affirmations of "keep looking, I promise it's so cute." Then finally, like a serpent in the brush, there it is. And goodness is it there, right in her face and even deeper in her heart. She'd cry if she didn't need to get focused momentarily on comparative politics. As the professor walks up to the Power Point, both future wives can tell the end of their window of opportunity is nigh. She skims through the preparation instructions checking just before emailing such a beacon of love and splendor to her future spouse, only to find the worst. She drops her head, lets her lip quiver and looks over to future wife and mouths "I can't sew." Silence. But have no fear. Future wife two conjures a solution, leans toward future wife one and assures her that in time of crafty doubt one can always, with faith ingenuity, use a hot glue gun. Future wifeys rejoice, for eureka, the blessed tablecloth has been found. A successful outing for our future wives, only leaving us with the longing cliffhanger of what ever they shall do to select the right napkin assortments. I'll guess we'll just have to wait and find out in two to five days. - Steve Schwartzman is a senior in communication studies and linguistics. When he isn't trying too hard to make people laugh he is usually watching sports, watching 90's cartoons or experiencing all things Aggie Life. Got a good idea for Steve to rant about? Hit him up at steve. schwartzman@aggiemaiLusu.edu or on Twitter @SchwartZteve BINGE: Alcohol education targets high-risk populations ► From page 5 with efforts targeting high-risk populations such as first-year students, sorority and fraternity members, and athletes. Thirty- even before they get to school. At DePaul University in Chicago, for example, students are required to take an online self-assessment to analyze their alcohol use before they get to campus. Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago also use the online program, called e-CHUG, or electronic Check-Up to Go. Meanwhile, schools are working to offer alcohol-free events, like the Beer Free Zone at UIC, and NU Nights at Northwestern, which offered a showing of the movie "Chicago" with related dance lessons, or bingo with prizes such as iPods. Harper College in Palatine offers a new class about drug and alcohol abuse in college, taught by a teacher who admits drinking once affected her own performance in school. Some schools even offer alcohol-free spring breaks. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, binge drinking has been notorious on dates such as Halloween and Unofficial St. Patrick's Day, a daylong drunkfest sponsored by bars that were losing money when March 17 fell within spring break. In response, the school and city have tried to crack down on such events, including steps to limit alcohol availability and installing surveillance cameras. All these efforts are a response to a study by the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism that identified binge drinking as a top problem on campuses across the country a decade ago. Since then, a survey of 747 college presidents reported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that nearly all colleges had implemented some form of alcohol education, four percent of colleges banned alcohol for all students, and 4 in 5 colleges offered an option for alcohol-free residences. Still, success has varied. At some colleges, nearly 70 percent of the students were identified as binge drinkers; at others there were none. It will take much harder work to make a dent in the problem, according to researchers such as Toben Nelson at the University of Minnesota, especially at big schools with an emphasis on sporting events, which had the most problems. Harm reduction and screening help, he said, but research shows that telling students why they shouldn't drink does little to change their behaviors. He says colleges could do much more to limit the availability of alcohol, which saturates college culture. He points to a success story at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which lowered its percentage of binge drinkers from the 60s to the 40s by limiting alcohol and requiring registration for parties so police could make sure they weren't getting out of hand. Research by the Harvard School for Public Health found that underage students in states with extensive laws restricting underage and high-volume drinking _ such as keg registration, 0.08 driving laws and restrictions on happy hours, pitchers and advertising _ were less likely to binge drink. Schools may always have binge drinkers, Nelson said, but it's defeatist to say nothing can be done to cut down on the severity and bad effects. "You're not going to stop it," Nelson said. "The idea is to reduce it and keep a lid on it." Fight beer goggles with buddy system #Aggielife A selection of tweets from the USU community "AXO dollar days has a CREDIT CARD SWIPER. So no excuse not to get something. I just bought a raffle ticket!" —@rileyjothehoe "Is being hipster a requirement to be hired on at quadside Cafe!?" —@IAmjasonRussell Alcohol clouds your judgement and affects your motor skills. We've been taught these facts since first grade. But we drink anyway because it's an effective way of winding down after a busy week spent on campus studying for exams and cramming our brains with information. It's important to address a common problem I've seen at many parties in Logan. There is a little something in the party world we call beer goggles. *Continue reading at UtahStatesman.com "I swear... The kids they take around on tours at USU just get younger and younger..." #areyoul2? #reallytho —@TheUnderdog92 "Finally figured out where I'm going to attend next year! Utah state here I come." —@ellotheremily UtahStateU n iversity blue goes gre hear NR week is this week, whats going on? USU's Natural Resource week is full is great events to attend. There will be free concerts, food, lectures, and a 5K event. For the full schedual visit the USU Sustainability website u. or use the QR. 13 code. 0 (Www.sustainability.usu.edu |