April 20, 2005
Topic Proposal (revised)
1. What is the problem that you will be trying to solve? Please, describe it in detail.
At all universities, including UT, there is a high number of students who participate in under-aged drinking, and these have led to many problems/accidents. Although rules are enforced everywhere, the university's ability to stop the people from drinking is insufficient and the motivation to drink is greater than their motivation to stop, so many continue to drink regardless of the existing policies.
2. Why is it a problem that cannot wait? What is its significance or urgency?
More and more students enter the university every year, most under the age of 21, and entering college for the first time. Many have never had alcohol and many have the inability to stop once they begin. The longer the university waits, the more people that will participate in these illegal activities. Alcohol is attributed to many drink and driving incidents, alcohol poisoning, and rape cases. Although these are extreme cases with alcohol, they exist as a reality of today.
3. Please present your solution, describing it as realistically as possible.
Awareness is already prevalent on the campus, but we need to give the students an actual motive to not drink under age. We could tag under-aged students with wristbands (as opposed to the existing stamp rule which students occasionally remove by washing out) to make sure those responsible for giving out alcohol are giving them to legally aged students. We could also begin a volunteer organization that has students attend parties and observe any illegal activities and report them if needed. The community should also do something about the penalty for those charged with an MIP to something more severe, replacing the lenient system that exists today. Also, we should also go straight to the alcohol source, to make sure the venders of alcohol are selling them legally and card as necessary.
4. Where would you look for primary research for this paper?
Internet for the majority of the secondary resources and library for the majority of the primary resources, also, newspaper articles may help when talking about more local incidents and problems with our issue and what is being done to correct/prevent these. We will also conduct a survey of fellow college students about their alcoholic experience.
Thanks for revising.
This is definitely a more specific topic proposal that gives me a sense of possible solutions you might propose. Judging from all the aspects of the solution you list, I think that you are trying to do way too many things. Perhaps you can focus on one aspect and develop a detailed program. For example, if you focus on the wristbands idea, you might talk about who will give the wristbands out, what they should be made of, what day of the week should students get them, on campus or on 6th street, what will stop people from removing a wristband. If you go with the volunteer organization, then you might focus on areas to be covered, how many students should be on watch on certain days of the week, how could they gain access to parties (if uninvited), how can they build a working relationship with the police. I suggest that you develop only one of your ideas as a solution to the problem. Remember, you don't need to completely eliminate such a big problem. If you can offer a practical way to curb it, that would be appropriate for the assignment.
Topic approved!
Posted by Mariela Hristova on April 20, 2005 03:04 PM