The Quad

Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: News

On Saturday, March 1, the Off Campus and Commuter Association distributed pretzels to the WCU community to promote safety and well-being awareness.

As students go through college and attend campus parties, they are confronted with responsibility issues and how to be safe when consuming alcohol. An initiative such as the OCCA Pretzel Service Project is one answer that students can find here at WCU.

According to OCCA president Anthony DiJiacomo, there are several goals that the group aims at through its pretzel service project.

"The project goals are to spread out the effects of the alcohol by giving party-goers a bread substance to help absorb the alcohol," DiJiacomo stated in an email. Additionally he said, the food will make a party-goer less likely to be loud as they are walking the streets because they are chewing. Residents of the West Chester borough can then appreciate the result in the streets of a quieter college town.

DiJiacomo stated that it is important to note that party-goers refers to students and non-students equally, as well as those who are 21 and those who are not.

Another goal of the pretzel service project, according the DiJiacomo, is to "have peers telling the party-goers to be safe." As people sometimes feel pressured by peers into doing self-destructive acts, this objective turns that idea around by promoting responsible acts.

The project also aims at a goal to "demonstrate publicly to the borough that WCU students care and seek to make a difference in the community," DiJiacomo said.

According to DiJiacomo, the goals reached by this particular project last semester were visible to the OCCA members in three different ways.

"First, many party-goers were extremely thankful for the substance," DiJiacomo said. "In many cases, we saw people getting the pretzels and giving them to highly intoxicated friends to help them walk home."

DiJiacomo also stated that the project has received both donations and attention from a newspaper in the local area.

"The South West Association of Neighbors (SWAN), a West Chester association, gave the OCCA $100 to continue this project." DiJiacomo said, adding that the SWAN members believed that promoting safety and well-being through the pretzel service project made a difference.

"Third, the Daily Local News had a front page article recognizing the project," DiJiacomo said. With the recognition by local media, such an awareness project could spread out further to curb affects of alcohol at other colleges nearby.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools