October 17, 2004

CU Regent Candidate Makes Alcohol Advertising An Issue

FROM THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATE comes word that a CU Board of Regents candidate is making the school’s advertising contract with the Coors Brewing Company a prime issue in her campaign to get elected.

The candidate, Jennifer Mello, has raised the issue of the inappropriateness of the advertising and licensing contract, a six year, $2.1 million contract that expires July 31, 2005.

"I understand the need for money, but when students are bingeing and even dying from alcohol, the money is irrelevant," Mello said.

One of the sitting CU Regents, Cindy Carlisle, has already questioned what kind of message the on-campus advertising sends to students.

"We should not be deriving money by advertising drinking," Carlisle said.

This CU Board of Regents election is merely a one school microcosm of the much wider issue: what a growing number of observers see as the widespread duplicity of the majority of the college athletics community (aided and abetted by the NCAA) to woe and fret about excessive drinking by their students and yet cozy up with huge media contracts that carry beer advertising.

More later . . . .

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(this 186 word excerpt—with accompanying commentary—was extracted from a 463 word article from the Boulder, CO Daily Camera of 10-16-04)