Although certain campus-area bars have ended their controversial entrance policies, members of the city’s Equal Opportunities Commission met Monday express their continued concerns about the issue and its discriminatory and possibly racial implications.
Two bars on University Avenue – Wando’s and Johnny O’s Sports Lounge – recently decided to remove signs which stated that state-issued IDs were no longer acceptable forms of age validation for entry. Brian Benford, vice president of the EOC, said he was glad these signs had been removed, but still expressed concern about the situation.
“I don’t think that this is a done deal,” he said. “This is just one piece of it. There are perceptions out there among many people in the public that this is a larger issue.”
Coco Bustamante, president of the commission, expressed similar concerns. She also said the removal of the signs didn’t necessarily mean that the policies had ended.
She hoped members of the EOC would continue to explore the issue more deeply to ensure that bar owners had indeed terminated these practices.
Bustamante also expressed contentment with the work of citizens and bloggers in bringing about awareness of the issue. She said that this level of participation was effective in bringing about change.
“It’s great to see that political activism can work and can reverse something,” she said.
EOC secretary John Quinlan agreed with Bustamante’s claims. He too felt that local activism was essential in changing these policies.
“It didn’t take necessarily a legal hearing … it was just the fact that there were enough people willing to raise the issue,” he said.
Benford said the EOC had created a subcommittee to further analyze how this specific incident was resolved in the hopes of implementing similar methods in the future.
The EOC also discussed ways to prevent other discriminatory practices, including educational programs for bar owners and further intervention on the part of the city.
“It may just be a genuine matter that public education is the remedy,” Benford said. “These were folks that didn’t intend to blatantly discriminate, but once they were told what the effects were there was a response and things moved on.”
He added he hopes this sort of education could be applied to help eliminate discriminatory practices elsewhere in the city.
Like Bustamante, he said the policies could still be in effect even though the signs had been removed.
“We don’t know absolutely for sure that this isn’t still occurring,” Benford said. “We want to make sure that there are measures in place to make sure that it isn’t happening if at all possible.”
Benford said he hoped the members of the EOC would become more vigilant in seeking out discriminatory practices instead of waiting for complaints to be filed.
The EOC also discussed the potential impact of voter ID legislation in Madison. Bustamante mentioned how the University of Wisconsin planned to issue a new student ID that would conform to the new law.
“The expense is greater, but at least they will have a valid ID for voting,” she said.
