What a difference a week makes.
A week ago today, UW officials testified before the city’s Alcohol Licensing and Review Committee that cheap drinks lead to high-risk drinking. Late-night drink specials represented a clear and present danger to the health of UW students and should be banned, the chancellor said.
But now, a week later, the university is touting the fact that it’s extending the Wisconsin Union’s hours; beer will be sold on campus until 2 a.m. on weekends.
This is fantastic news for students. Starting next fall, we’ll be able to stay at the Terrace all night and not worry about waiting in lines at State Street bars after the Union closes. Bands can play longer, dances will go later and games can last longer.
This is also good news for those of us concerned about student alcohol abuse. Keeping the Union taps open later means more students will drink in supervised settings while being entertained. In short, more students will drink responsibly.
While the extended hours are welcome news, they stand in sharp contrast to UW’s past position. As every beer-guzzling Badger knows, the cheapest drinks in town are at the Union Terrace, where it’s possible to binge for barely $5. So while UW is advocating a downtown drink-special ban, it is simultaneously increasing the availability of its own cheap drinks.
By keeping the Union open later, the university seems to be acknowledging what its critics have been saying all along: Offering cheap drinks does not necessarily lead to high-risk drinking.
Students binge-drink for a variety of reasons; most important are a lack of downtown entertainment options and students’ general acceptance of high-risk drinking as a social norm. Reducing alcohol abuse hinges on the university and city fostering more entertainment options and changing student attitudes.
By keeping the Union open later, the university provides students with a cheap, supervised setting to drink. Even better, the Union offers plenty of drinking diversions like music, movies and games. In fact, far from being the main draw, the Union’s beer sales serve to subsidize the entertainment, a key reason for expanding hours.
“Contrary to what has been recently reported, this decision is based on expanding programming options, not alcohol sales,” Wiley said in the Union’s announcement.
Fair enough, but it’s unreasonable to then hold bars to a different standard. Wiley and company should apply to downtown bars the same reasoning they used in extending the Union’s hours. Students are bound to drink — the challenge is to provide supervised settings that discourage high-risk consumption. Allowing bars to provide cheap drinks ultimately means students will avoid dangerous house parties and unsupervised dorm-room drinking.
Affordable drinks are a vital part of the equation. Selling cheap drinks to those of age, as the Union does, is vital to subsidize all-age entertainment.
Just like selling cheap drinks at the Union later will dampen the luster of dangerous house parties and unsupervised dorm-room drinking, allowing bars to sell drinks at competitive rates will promote drinking in supervised settings and, ultimately, more entertainment options.
By increasing the Union’s hours, the administration showed it understands what needs to be done to discourage high-risk drinking.
Now UW needs to extend the same logic to downtown bars.
Alexander Conant ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.
