BY NICHOLE ODEN
TIGER TV ONLINE REPORTER
Picture a typical home game day: The University is coated in purple and gold. Purple and gold blaze proudly all over campus on t-shirts, tents, baseball caps, coolers and just about every other tail gating essential.
This year, beer cans is just one more thing to add to the list.
Anheuser-Busch has launched a line of Bud Light cans that come in 27 different color combinations for college areas around the country called “Fan Cans.” Busch is promoting the cans as a game day staple with ads telling people to “show your true colors.”
Many schools have already had Busch stop making the cans. In fact the SEC has come out in opposition to the campaign fearing that it may promote underage drinking.
Busch said in a press release about the cans that they in no way support underage drinking and will pull the campaign at any school that makes a formal complaint against it.
LSU has not yet made a formal complaint against the campaign but Chancellor Mike Martin said he does plan on having a conversation about the campaign soon with the bottlers of the beer, Mocklers.
“Locally we will have a civil conversation with Mocklers, but we will not force them to stop selling the beer cans,” Martin said.
Martin said although he agrees underage drinking is a serious issue, he believes it’s a separate issue from the beer cans.
If there is underage drinking on campus, at the tail gates for instance, Martin said the University will take it seriously and will address the issue heavily.
Many students seem to agree with Martin that the beer cans won’t have a direct effect on a student’s decision to drink.
“Underage drinking will happen no matter what color the cans are especially here in the south where drinking is so common,” said Matthew Smith, English senior.
Julie Gauthier, sports administration sophomore agreed with Smith. “Students are going to drink whether they are of age or not.”
For now Martin is not heavily concerned with the color of cans beer is coming in. He said that it is not currently in the top tier of problems he is concerned with when he has other issues such as budget cuts and the new bus routes.
“In the grand scheme of things, the color of beer cans is not the biggest problem we have,” Martin said.
