The newspapers have been full of stories about China lately, and I think we’ll be seeing more in the months to come. On the political page, Bill Clinton is pushing Congress to bestow permanent normal trade relations on China. In a speech at Johns Hopkins University last week, the president said giving permanent trade status to the Chinese is the best way to ensure that country makes strides toward democracy.
Mr. Clinton says he sees a new China, where faxes, e-mail and the Internet guarantee an explosion of democracy and predicted that the Communist Party’s efforts to contain an on-line democratic movement will be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
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University, Inc.
It’s spring in Burlington and the last traces of snow are receding to the north side of buildings and shrubs. The breeze carries the aroma of wet earth and renewal. The University of Vermont is on spring break and the town is pleasantly empty. The students at Groovy UV may be the only college students in America who drink less on spring break than they do on campus.
According to a new study released by the Harvard School of Public Health, University of Vermont students are almost twice as likely as their peers to engage in binge drinking. Seventy-one percent of our scholars has five or more drinks in one sitting in the two weeks before they responded to the Harvard survey, as opposed to the 44 percent national average, and 43 percent of UVM students drink five or more in a sitting twice a week or more, as compared to 23 percent nationally.
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