Please note that the following is a work of fiction intended to entertain. The names, events, and offices are purely ficitonal.

    A recent study shows that Clark College ranks last amongst Northwest colleges in alcohol consumption on or around campus.  This study gives a score to every Northwest campus regarding the students’ ability to party. 

    Over the past few years, Clark has shown a decline in this category.  Nevertheless faculty and students were disappointed by the last place finish.

     “It was really hard to find any evidence that Clark has a culture of drinking,” John Steinbach, who headed up the study said.  “We found more evidence of drinking at Northwest bible colleges then we did at Clark.  In fact, the numbers at Clark were more comparable to the numbers we see come out of middle schools.”

    “It is really disheartening to see us in last place,” Jan Hoffman, director of Student Affairs said.  “I never imagined we would slide this far.  If we can’t reverse this trend, it is going to become very difficult to recruit students from other areas of the state.”        

    “We just aren’t competing like we used to,” a source within the administration said.  “The students seem really apathetic about representing Clark as a partying campus.  I want to support our students desire to study hard and get their degrees, but it would be nice to see a little more balance.  I graduated from a Midwest university with decent grades, and I went to a party every weekend.”

    It isn’t easy to determine why Clark has suffered such huge losses in student drinking.  There has been a lot of finger pointing and reasons offered for the decline. 

    “Clark has no fraternities or sororities to bolster the ranks of college drinkers.”  Janice Dugan, a political science professor at Clark said. “Most campuses have about 5 percent of its student body involved in an organization that’s sole existence seems to revolve around partying,”

    Sociology professor Marcus Washington said: “Clark County is a fairly conservative area near a very liberal metropolis.  We are finding that putting a conservative population near a liberal one causes the conservatives to actually stand by their principles.  While an Idaho conservative may cause most liberals to blush, Clark conservatives seem pretty sincere.”

    “Let’s be real about this,” math professor James Wolferton said.  “We need a place on campus that will serve alcohol to the adults and students with fake ID’s.  We could raise revenues and actually make Clark a fun and cool place to be.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the benefits of a pub on campus.” 

     “We have plenty of students over 21 -- It shouldn’t be that hard to compete with other community colleges,” a 19-year-old student at Clark said. 

    “That just isn’t the case,” Steinbach said.  “Our studies show that most of the adult age students at Clark drink ‘over-moderately,’ meaning that they aren’t given to drunkenness, and they do most of their drinking at home on the weekends.”

    “Until we figure out the root causes of our inability to party, I can’t see this getting any better,” Hoffman said.