In An Absolut World

As college students are a notoriously inebriated group, one would expect university presidents to be in favour of more restrictive alcohol laws. It came as a surprise to many, then, when over 100 presidents from some of the top universities in the U.S. (including Dartmouth, Duke, and John Hopkins) signed a statement urging the public to rethink the minimum drinking age—by lowering it to 18.

The Amethyst Initiative was founded by John McCardell, President Emeritus of Middlebury College. As a response to the inordinate amount of binge drinking that occurs on college campuses, it seeks to encourage responsible drinking. According to the group’s website, the 21-year-old drinking age is simply not working.

The initiative has found both widespread support and controversy. As reported in the Stanford Daily, organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the American Medical Association have lobbied university presidents to remove their names from the document. MADD has insinuated that any institution supporting the initiative is unsafe, with lax policies on youth alcohol consumption.

If the initiative’s purpose is to encourage public debate, they’ve succeeded. The petition has created quite the buzz about alcohol consumption and abuse among American youth. But considering the powerful backlash combined with the initiative’s lack of salient recommendations, American college students may still have to wait for the big two-one before adding rum to their Coke.—Leonicka Valcius

A New Flagship for European Excellence

That’s the tag line for what’s been called José Manuel Barroso’s pet project. The President of the European Commission’s aim is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a grand scale initiative to put the European Union at the forefront of technological advance.

In June the EU chose Budapest as the headquarters for EIT, which is expected to get underway by 2010, and has been allocated €309 million for the first five years. The Hungarian capital beat out four other bidders, from Poland, Austria-Slovakia, Spain, and Germany. While many have drawn comparisons to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EIC seems to be more of an infrastructure than a university.

Administered by a Governing Board of “18 high-calibre members balancing prominent expertise from the higher education, research, business and innovation fields.” The institute in turn will select Knowledge and Innovation Communities, essentially networks of universities, research organizations, and private businesses that work together to create new technology.—LV

Iran student protest

An alleged sexual assault at a Tehran university has enraged students, who responded by seizing the accused vice-chancellor from his office, handing him to security, then holding a 3,000-strong sit-in calling for the administrator to be punished and for the board of directors to resign. This is a rare display of public student outrage in the conservative Islamic republic.

The United Students Front is made of several left-wing Iranian student groups. In 2006 the group staged two major peaceful political protests. In the first, a thousand students campaigned against pressure placed on reformist groups at universities since President Ahmadinejad came to power. At a subsequent protest at Amirkabir University in Tehran, students chanted “death to the dictator” as they set fire to photos of the president. Ahmadinejad responded by asking officials to not disturb the protesters.

In prior years, the USF’s protests often turned violent due to clashes between the pro-reform students and hard-line gangs and police. In 2000, students who had attended a peaceful pro-reform rally were beaten by police in a six-day riot. One year prior, the closure of a pro-reform newspaper spurred a violdent student protest with three killed and over 200 injured, the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

—Alexandra Blue

Oxford Protest

Animal testing has always been a hot-button issue on campuses, but at Oxford the debate isn’t happening inside the classroom. SPEAK, a group of animal-rights activists, is using protests in an attempt to shut down the construction of a facility for pharmaceutical research testing new drugs. SPEAK (“the voice for the animals”) aims to put an end to all animal testing in the UK, and in particular, contests the practice of vivisection on primates. Vivisection is the dissection of live animals, only permissible by law in Europe for cancer research. As the biomedical industry points out, there is also a legal requirement that all drugs be tested on a minimum of two mammalian species to be accepted for human use.

Last year campaigners prevented the creation of an animal testing laboratory at Cambridge University. It appears Oxford is now experiencing similar tribulations. Security was increased due to the continual protesting, and the university successfully sought an injunction, claiming that workers on the facility and students were being adversely affected. Currently, allegations of hoax letters to shareholders are under investigation, after shares in the company targeted dropped significantly.—AB