Opinion

More hypocrisy

The PACE (Policy, Alternatives, Community and Education) Partnership Council held its quarterly meeting yesterday, gathering decision makers from across the University community to discuss high-risk drinking prevention efforts. Representatives from the Dean of Students, the Madison and UW police departments, Madison bar owners, ALRC, UW housing, the UW Chancellor’s office, UW students and other organizations were in attendance.

House parties formed the crux of the discussion. Many principal players expressed their confusion regarding PACE’s goals for the upcoming year.

Aaron Brower, principal investigator for PACE, said the highly touted “safe-house-party guide” recently sponsored by PACE is not so much a guide for throwing a safe house party, but rather an informational packet designed to tell students what will bring police to their door. If this held true, police would be constantly knocking down doors.

One student expressed concern over the mixed messages PACE may be sending to students. After pressing for drink-special bans and now focusing on house parties.

We suggest two words: laissez-faire

Apparently, the crux of PACE’s latest push will involve landlord involvement when house parties on their property become an issue with outside authorities. They also want to continue to pursue the highly irrational goal of parental notification for detox violations or other alcohol-related incidents.

When did PACE become a parental figure for students at this University? One of the integral aspects of the college experience is the challenge of adult responsibility and the maturity that must result. PACE’s babying policies demonstrate with alarming clarity just how much faith the organization lacks in students’ ability to make decisions for themselves. That kind of hand-holding was for high school. College demands maturity. PACE’s actions are entirely counterproductive.

According to UW police, although many of the individuals receiving drinking citations are in the 18-21 age range, approximately half of all drinking citations issued are not to UW-Madison students. PACE is also floating the equally irrational notion of notifying other educational institutions when their students are issued citations in Madison. The legwork required for this project sounds as absurd as the idea itself.

There is clearly a drastic difference between realistic student-drinking regulations and those that PACE is pursuing. Students and those who partake in the activities PACE seeks to regulate see these as entirely different realistic scenarios.

With the year-long voluntary drink-special ban nearly expired, PACE may soon find itself at a crossroads. Nitty Gritty bar owner Marsh Shapiro said he feels PACE needs to continue to collect data on the results of the voluntary drink-special ban through this fall. Shapiro continued that if there continues to be little change in the number of alcohol violations and assault incidents, PACE may “need to go in a different direction.”

Surprisingly, Dean of Students Luoluo Hong agrees. She said she would rather see students in regulated bars than in unsafe house parties. This seems to contradict the Dean of Students’ office message last year. The definition of an “unsafe” house party is also yet to be realistically determined.

The overarching theme of the meeting appeared to be “Where do we go from here?” PACE staffers, along with other attendees, do not seem to have an answer to this question, which leaves us wondering. When out of innovative ideas, what do they regulate next? Weekend drink specials were the first casualty. We have a suspicion that house parties may, in some form or fashion, be next.