NORTHRIDGE : Exhibit to Focus on Women, Alcoholism

Two-foot-high portraits of women ravaged by alcoholism will dot the campus of Cal State Northridge on Monday, dramatically kicking off National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week.

Forty-four of San Diego photographer Molly Lowe’s works, augmented by handwritten tales of each subject’s own battle with alcohol, will make up the show “Women in Recovery,” and begin three days of education on the liabilities of heavy drinking.

“It’s a very, very compelling kind of exhibit,” said Carole Baxter, staff coordinator of a campus drug-abuse program called Consider Your Alternatives. “I think it’s visually stunning.”

Consider Your Alternatives typically sponsors one day of activities during the annual alcohol awareness campaign, Baxter said, but has extended this year’s program to three days, in part because of a recently released study by Columbia University. The report by the university’s Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse finds college-age women catching up to their male peers when it comes to binge-drinking and drinking to become inebriated.

“We thought this was a good time to address women and alcohol,” Baxter said.

In addition to Monday’s show of photographs, numerous activities and presentations through Wednesday will be held on the north lawn of the physical education building. Tuesday events will include Los Angeles police officers conducting field sobriety tests on students who have been drinking, and the display of a car wrecked by a drunk driver. Students are encouraged to wear black in memory of friends or family killed in alcohol-related crashes.

On Wednesday, representatives of alcohol and drug treatment centers will be on hand, and firefighters will demonstrate a tool used to extricate people from wrecked cars.

The “Women in Recovery” exhibit will be on display from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday on the north lawn, and will then be moved to the student health center, where it will remain open to the public through the fall semester.