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Wine-tasting event flier not tastefulEditorial / OpinionArticle Launched: 09/29/2007 10:15:51 AM EDTKerrie Tarbell of Leominster told the Sentinel & Enterprise recently that she complained to the school department when her 12-year-old son, Nathaniel, came home from Samoset Middle School with a flier advertising a wine-tasting event.Tarbell, 37, said the flier, promoting a wine tasting on Thursday to raise money for the nonprofit Leominster Education Foundation, isn't an appropriate thing to go home with kids.She wasn't expecting to see it again, but last week her 11-year-old son, Casey, came home from Fall Brook Elementary School with the same flier."The schools are basically saying, 'Hey, there's a wine tasting, give this to mommy and daddy so we can get drunk with them,'" Tarbell said.Other parents have also complained to the Sentinel & Enterprise, saying the flier has come home with children as young as first-graders.Tarbell said the flier sends kids the message that drinking is acceptable."It's not appropriate, it's telling kids it's OK," she said. "With all the information telling you about drugs, alcohol, saying 'watch out for your prescription drugs,' this is the wrong message. What if they're not getting good guidance at home? Shouldn't they at least be getting good guidance at school, always?"But Superintendent Nadine Binkley said she didn't think the flier was inappropriate."It's not promoting it for students," Binkley said. "We're promoting it for parents. It's a wine tasting. I didn't think it was inappropriate,Advertisementand we're not inviting students to be part of it."Binkley said the event, which is nearly sold out, is not an opportunity for adults to get drunk, but rather sample wine and appetizers and socialize."This is not an event I would imagine people becoming inebriated at," she said. "You taste very, very small quantities of wine. It's much more of a social event."The foundation is raising money to purchase mobile computer labs for city schools, and has already raised $16,600, not counting the money from tickets to the wine tasting, Binkley said.Karyn Doherty, secretary of the foundation committee, said she is sensitive to Tarbell's complaint and said she will consider advertising another way if the wine tasting becomes an annual event."Anytime you do something for the first time, you're going to get scrutinized ... It's meant to be a social event, we're not focusing on the alcohol consumption," she said. "This is the first complaint I've heard."Certainly, we don't think there's anything wrong with the education foundation holding a wine-tasting event to raise money for the public schools.But they have to understand that whenever alcohol is served at a fundraiser, or in this case is the primary focus of the fundraiser, it's going to raise questions and some concerns.We also think Binkley is naive to think that some people -- even if it's just a few people -- won't be walking out of the fundraiser a little more inebriated than when they went in.We encourage the event's organizers to make sure these people have rides home.At the same time, we think it was a poor decision to send the fliers home with students, especially young students, who shouldn't be concerning themselves with wine-tasting events.There's plenty of ways to make the public aware of these events, including through this newspaper, without sending wine-tasting fliers home with very young children.
I am genuinely puzzled. Surely these things are like chocolate raffles in terms of commonality
My mistake. This was actually in Massachussetts, a supposedly liberal northern state. This kind of public reaction to a wine-tasting education fundraiser might be more likely in the Bible Belt, but then again there are religious zealots everywhere.
