I appreciated reading Carla Dogan’s informed response, entitled “Inebriation needs moderation at games,” to my column on Tuesday, “Get up, stand up for drunkeness” (if for no other reason than that it remained within the boundaries of thoughtful debate, unlike the other response columns to my pieces this semester). I shall now return the favor.

I first take issue with the only not-so-informed premise of her piece. To quote her: “I think I speak for, well, the entire student body when I say that students over 21 have the legal right to get wasted before the game, but don’t have the legal right to attend said game until they have dried out for a while.” While no accurate statistics of students’ opinions on “show and blow” have yet been assembled, I leave it up to the readers – who I am utterly confident disagree with her affirmative position on the policy – to assess the truth of her opinion. I, for one, have not encountered a single student who approves of “show and blow” and this is not necessarily because I hang out with a pro-alcohol crowd. The notion that students at UW must accept limits on there boozing is, likely, one that can be presumed to be a priori false.

Her discussion of students’ rights is also troubling. She quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” I couldn’t agree more. If Ms. Dogan also truly concurred with the former Justice’s sentiment, then I can not understand how she reached her conclusion. If an intoxicated student cuffed a student in the head at a Badger game, then no one would object to his being charged with battery – not underage drinking or public drunkenness. Drinking alcohol is a personal choice, one which should not make one above law. With that said, it is not drinking itself which is the problem – it is the disorderly conduct, which Ms. Dogan so fears.

Unlike Ms. Dogan, we must distinguish between booze and crime. While the former often leads to the latter, it is not a cause and effect connection. Indeed, the crime-free majority here at UW – part of the boozing vast majority – prove this empirically. If Ms. Dogan really believes that my rights end where hers begin, then why would she object to my consumption of alcohol?

The notion of “rights” needs elaboration. When I use the term, it should be obvious that I am not referring to a legal claim. Indeed, the current law is precisely that to which I am objecting. Rather, when I use the term “rights” I am affirming our natural claim to individual freedom (see the Holmes quote above). Human beings should be imbued with all the freedom society can allow, since this results in the least amount of distortion of the individual’s wants and personality. Societal obligations create guilt and anxiety and should therefore be curtailed as much as possible. I hardly see how my natural desire to drink would threaten societal welfare.

Ms. Dogan is advocating unnecessary boundaries on the human experience. If she is truly the sympathizer of French existentialism her column would indicate, then she would champion human freedom. If she truly objects to the effects of Sartre’s pour soi, then she would denounce unnecessary public intrusions on the private life. Both Camus and Sartre built their philosophy on the bankruptcy of collective values. The individual must determine for himself what is right and wrong and not subject himself to the puritanical ranting of the latter day prohibitionists.
The law may determine Ms. Dogan’s morality, but it will certainly not interfere with mine.