OPINION & EDITORIAL
UW needs to offer alternatives to drinking culture
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Monday, November 12, 2001
It’s three days since the party, and we’re still cleaning Jell-O-shot stains off the carpet.
Walking to class, we can still find crumpled plastic cups strewn about the neighborhood. We know they were ours because each had a different phrase on the bottom, designed so that partygoers can match their own cups with those of the opposite sex for free shots. There is vomit in the bushes under the porch, cigarette butts strewn everywhere and a hole in the wall courtesy of a violent drunk with hard knuckles. The remains of the last half-barrel sit on the porch, infecting the neighborhood with the scent of stale Old Milwaukee.
If city officials are looking for a battleground to fight the war on binge drinking, they can find ground zero at our apartment.
I’m certainly not trying to condemn house parties — few people leave UW-Madison without fond memories of house-party experiences. Our place might look like a disaster area, but the stories — the girl who tongued a complete stranger for a minute for a free shot, the people walking up to each other saying things like, “My cup says ‘Chlamydia’ - do you have chlamydia?” or the spontaneous break into certain derogatory chants from Badger football games — make it worth all the clean-up.
Of course, city officials have tried to change all this for years, and I don’t blame them. House parties are dangerous, and more than a few students bear injuries afterward to prove it. Drunken falls in crammed basements, physical fights, trips to detox because of the all-you-can-drink nature of the affairs — none of these put house parties in a really beneficial light.
In the last year, one UW student died after a fall from a balcony during a house party. Both the city and the university probably feel their efforts to stop binge drinking and house parties are not only justified but morally required.
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to know how to go about it. Drinking cannot be eliminated; it’s a part of the culture, a lesson the United States government learned during the time of Prohibition. Binge drinking among college students is an institution ingrained almost as deeply. Threatening college students about drinking is like threatening terrorists with violence: it doesn’t stop anything, because everyone thinks they are too smart to get caught.
But city officials have not learned this lesson. Three years ago, they used undercover officers to perform sting operations at house parties, a practice that drew so much ire they soon ended it. They have tried to ban drink specials, crack down on fake ID’s and restrict bar capacity for years, and now Ald. Tim Bruer has proposed mandatory keg registration. This plan, while not as invasive as sting operations, amounts to the same result: trying to stop drinking by giving police the tools to come down on it harder.
Everyone can agree that if drinking, underage or otherwise, cannot be stopped, it should at least be made less dangerous. City officials do not have the power to put the drinking age at 19, a change that would allow almost all college students to consume in the safe atmosphere of a bar, where drinks are paid for one-at-a-time and bartenders’ jobs depend upon keeping things under control. But they do have the power to ease up on ticketing for fake ID’s — after all, why should they penalize the underagers in the safe environment of a bar and not those in the relatively uncontrolled atmosphere of a house party?
They also have the power to set up alternative places students can go on a weekend night, alternative means for us to lower our inhibitions, and alternative things to do after drinking a little, rather than simply drinking more. A student can find a house party on every corner on a weekend night; finding something else to do is a bit more of challenge.
The possibilities for improvement are endless. Student-ticket prices for athletic events can be lowered. The number of school-sponsored musical acts, comedians and entertainers is embarrassingly low for a school this size. The publicity and size of the intramural program is also disproportionate to the school’s size, and efforts that have worked to reduce crime in the inner city, such as midnight basketball leagues, could reduce drinking here. And any late-night events the school or city can put together where food is offered cannot help but draw a crowd.
The school is already doing some of these things, through the RWJ Project grant or simply on its own. But publicity is weak, and it seems as if officials have simply given up on improving alternatives and given in to supporting the enforcement side. Maybe some of these alternatives would work; maybe none would. But if the danger of underage and binge drinking is as great as they say it is, it must be worth the effort to do some serious experimentation to find some solutions. They cannot fully supplant the staple of collegiate drinking — it’s just too much fun. But if I could go to a cheap show or event or play in a sports league instead of cleaning Jell-O shots off my carpet, I would at least have to think twice.
