About 15 representatives from various athletics teams at Benedictine University (Illinois) recently were brought together in hopes of forming a committee for a new grant given to us by Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., and the NCAA. The name of the grant: CHOICES.

The basic idea of the CHOICES grant is to give students the choice to live a better lifestyle. With this grant, the NCAA and Busch encourage schools to implement and evaluate alcohol-education programs. Funded programs like CHOICES are designed to work toward the elimination of illegal and excessive alcohol consumption on college campuses. They also feel that an environment at Benedictine can be created that supports and encourages personal CHOICES that are legal, healthy, appropriate and safe.

This newly formed committee has worked hard over the past three months trying to figure out what exactly all this means to us as Benedictine students.

The first week of August, six representatives spent two days discussing with our athletics director, John Stachniak, and NCAA Program Coordinator for Health and Safety, Mary Wilfert, the problems with our campus, solutions for them, and where the grant comes into play in these situations. Through our discussions, we discovered the underlying ideals of the grant and set very high goals for the university to try to attain over the next two years with the grant.

We feel CHOICES will help us in three major categories. We feel that it can help us educationally, socially and in our hopes of reaching out into our local communities. We have thought of many different ideas and plans on how to spend the $30,000 in grant money awarded to us from this program.

We recently presented three major propositions to our school's president and staff in hopes of their support. Our first conclusion was that changes are needed to our student center to improve study habits and create a better studying environment. We feel a new social attitude is needed here at Benedictine, one that involves all students, both commuters and residents. By changing the Pub/Coffee house into more of an entertainment lounge, we feel it can give the students a better choice than drinking in their rooms during the week and weekend.

Finally, we want to educate both the students and student-athletes in a way that is easiest and best suited for both the faculty and students. We are requesting speakers to come in throughout the year to educate us in drinking responsibly, living a better life and being proud of being a Benedictine student and athlete.

We thank the NCAA for allowing us to see its beautiful headquarters and opening its doors to us in hopes of creating a new environment at Benedictine, one that involves making better CHOICES. You made us feel important and made us feel like our little school up here in Lisle, Illinois, was just as important as the big ones around the nation.

D.J. Wildes is an NCAA delegate and CHOICES representative of Benedictine University (Illinois).