Rag Week 2010: Who Wants to Sponsor a Galway Student?

According to Galway's local newspapers, once again, rag week has been going too far with heavily intoxicated students roaming the streets of the city and wreaking havoc, some even urinating in public and offending local residents and business owners.

Rag week is a student tradition in Ireland, a week of special events organized by students of Irish colleges and universities in order to raise money for charities but too often coupled by binge drinking and drunken disorder.

Since rag week is always a bit of a dilemma for everyone involved, I scratched my head a little and quickly found a solution for this mayhem: instead of having drunken students parading in their underwear all over the city, why not sponsor a student through an entire week of sobriety?

Since drinking alcohol is so much part of the life of Irish students (and Irish non-students, come to think of it!), a week of sobriety should certainly be a challenge for any student of Ireland. Imagine the huge amount of money raised if every student of Ireland got anything between 10 and 100 local residents and businesses to give them, say, €10 for a whole week spent whithout consuming a single drop of alcohol!

Of course, I am sure that pub and night-club owners wouldn't be too happy about this, but who cares? They can still keep on cashing in on the Nation's No.1 disease (alcoholism) once the week is over; I'm sure there will be an awful lot of thirsty students then.

I am not saying this as a "respectable" tight-assed member of the public; believe me, I know what I'm talking about, after all, I have a third-level education myself, even though I can't remember much of my rag week, which was probably the whole point of it; hey, I was a foreign student and I didn't even know that the purpose of rag week was to raise money for charity!

P.S. Here's a Paypal button; sponsor me if you like, I haven't gotten drunk since my 33th birthday and the next time I get drunk is the day I win the jackpot in the Irish lotto, which means probably never (never say never!?!). My cause is a trip to Disneyland Paris this summer for me and the kids so please give me money and I promise I won't pee on your doorstep, thank you!