Why are underage drinkers at bars ticketed? Well … technically, it is “illegal,” but that is beside the point. Underage drinkers should not be ticketed in campus-area bars.
If Madison was an autonomous island, the drinking age would not be 21. The American drinking age is 21 because young people outside Madison can?t seem to figure out how to drink and not drive. Mayor Sue Bauman agreed, “Responsible drinking, at any age, works.”
There are some facts about drinking in Madison that should be considered before drinking policies are established and tickets are handed out. First, college students will drink somewhere, no matter what police do. They can drink in bars or dilapidated basements.
Second, bars are far safer than any other drinking situation. They are built and maintained to control rowdy drinkers. Fights are broken up, people who are too drunk are cut off, fire escapes are maintained and good times are had by all. None of these precautions are taken at house parties, where underage drinkers will go if they are prohibited from bars.
Ald. Tim Bruer summed it up well: “If you drive people out of bars and into an 80-year-old building and an unsupervised environment where you have no control, then you run the risk of much higher incidences of problems.”
Last, people tend to drink more responsibly at bars than in other situations. Partly for economic reasons, the less you drink at a bar the more money you come home with. At a house party, $4 buys you as much Natural Ice as you can drink. Not surprisingly, people drink too much.
There are also more social controls on excessive drinking at bars. Nobody wants to be the obnoxious drunk or pass out on a table.
I don?t mean to say bars are perfect and nothing bad ever happens, but they are far better than the alternative. So, I beg police and the policy makers to do your job and keep students safe. The politically popular decision is to write out a lot of tickets. The best decision is to do nothing ? let college students have their inevitable fun in a safe environment.
Ben Johnson, UW junior
