Tired of the lack of nonalcoholic entertainment available in Ames?

The Student Affairs Commission dedicated much its time at Thursday’s meeting, the second ever for the commission, to the discussion of possible non-alcoholic entertainment options for students.

Sara Kellogg, co-adviser to ISU AfterDark and program coordinator for substance abuse and violence prevention, was a guest at the meeting to answer questions about the organization, which offers nonalcoholic weekend events to ISU students.

Kellogg explained what the organization was all about and took questions from the members.

“[The students] really came up with the ideas,” Kellogg said.

Steve Schainker, Ames city manager, asked where funding for holding the free events comes from.

Kellogg explained that some of their budget comes from the Thielen Student Health Center.

This is because ISU AfterDark works with substance abuse prevention program. The rest of the budget comes from other donations.

Government of the Student Body president and senior in political science Emily Jensen asked what they have considered getting funding for, such as student fees.

Kellogg said this was considered but determined to not be possible.

Fern Kupfer, neighborhood representative and associate professor of English, asked what kind of prizes were given out at these events.

“Anything from T-shirts to iPods,” Kellogg said.

Schainker asked how the student response has been to the events that ISU AfterDark puts on and what the average attendance was.

The events are pretty well-attended and vary from event to event, Kellogg said, but average was about 230 students attendance.

The discussion began to shift not only to providing nonalcoholic entertainment but how to discourage students from drinking.

However, neighborhood representative Frank Trumpy said that this was a bigger problem than the commission could solve.

Schainker agreed with this point.

“Just throwing money at it may not solve it,” he said.

The meeting continued beyond the Iowa State Daily’s publication time.