Saturdays are finally back to being the fun Saturdays we know and love. The warm weather has arrived and the University’s day-parties have returned. Instead of fearing those long, cold commutes across Grounds, you can once again bathe in happiness on your lawn, your neighbor’s lawn or some random person’s lawn.
As I walked to central Grounds myself this past Sunday morning, each house I passed sported a beautiful collage of beer cans and other miscellaneous objects elegantly littered across its lawn from the night before. Unfortunately, however, the familiar scene made me think about the rather aggressive drinking culture here at the University. While it seems almost impossible to find statistics regarding the student body’s alcohol consumption, we cannot deny members of our University love drinking. Just take a look at our mascot — the wahoo: a fish that can drink twice its own weight.
Combine our love for drinking with the arrival of spring weather and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Since more people flock to their lawns to drink, police officers and authorities can more easily observe activity, and considering recent events, there certainly won’t be a shortage of officers around. So statistically speaking, if more students are drinking and probably breaking the law, then more students will be given citations and arrested — just look at the increasing crime rates as depicted in the University police’s recent reports.
To combat this spring trend toward increased drinking and citation, I argue the University has a responsibility to provide legal alternatives to drinking out on the lawn of your house or some random frat party. On Saturdays or weekend nights the University should sanction and promote events for students who wish to drink in a place free from the over-scrutinizing eyes of police officers.
Take Hamilton College for example — a small liberal arts college in upstate New York that provides legal alternatives for eager party-going students. The administration at Hamilton College dubs several locations around its campus as social spaces. Fraternities, sororities and other student bodies can then rent these spaces out and throw supervised parties. The party hosts, trained by the authorities, then manage the party and are responsible for the party. Alcohol is served by a trained, licensed official and several regulations are adhered to. However, on the whole, due to the absence of menacing officers, students feel safe at these parties.
In fact, Hamilton itself occasionally rents out these spaces to throw parties — complete with alcoholic beverages — for third parties that sponsor the events.
Miraculously enough, these parties almost never end traumatically. Because the parties offer free beer, kids actually go and have fun. More importantly, partygoers tend to control their alcohol consumption better because they know they lie under a watchful eye. When the night is said and done, kids find themselves in a familiar place, and police officers don’t punish innocent college students with arrests, citations and other pointless misdemeanors.
Yes, unlike Hamilton, the University is a public institution, and certainly different restrictions exist, but are there no ways around such policies? Why can’t the University hold a similar, sanctioned party? Perhaps a concert on the Lawn or a dance in Memorial Gym? Considering we assert our institution as a liberal University, our administration should consider these more liberal alternatives.
If the University managed to organize one of these described social events, it would alleviate some of the responsibility from the Charlottesville police and therefore minimize the number of arrests and other drinking related citations. Removing just a fraction of the drinkers from meandering around the streets of Charlottesville and providing them a safer alternative can eventually lead to a more positive — and safer — environment around town.
Nate Menninger is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at n.menninger@cavalierdaily.com.
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