The first time I saw the sign for the Dead Poet in 2019, I desperately wanted to get inside. Being only 20 years old at the time, however, I had to wait my turn — and wait I did, when my 21st birthday was followed closely by the lockdown, forcing me to postpone my visit a little further.
Now, my visit to Dead Poet will have to be postponed indefinitely. Not because of the pandemic (though it’s definitely not smart to be out at bars right now anyway), but because of the new age restriction and dress code in place at the establishment.
Reading about these “updates,” the 23-and-up age restriction was the first thing that caught my eye. Being only 21, I was annoyed that I wouldn’t get the chance to see the murals or the new décor inside for myself. My guess is most undergrads at the University won’t, either.
The second component of the new updates, which mandates the use of “cocktail attire,” is perhaps even more frustrating.
When the bar first opened under the new management, the dress code required female patrons to wear high heels, as evidenced by a now-deleted social media post from the official Dead Poet Instagram account. 
And the “cocktail attire” requirement comes across as elitist, frankly. Cocktail attire isn’t cheap. Students — especially graduate students — often don’t have the surplus budget to go shopping for a new outfit just to get into a bar that’s basically just “elevated Tigerland.”
Not to mention the other local bars which already cater to an older, non-college crowd and don’t enforce a “cocktail attire” dress code, like Hayride Scandal on 5110 Corporate Blvd. Suite B, which opened in 2017; Olive or Twist on 7248 Perkins Road, which opened in 2016; or even a Baton Rouge staple like The Bulldog on 4385 Perkins Road.
Now, the changes at Dead Poet are annoying, but they don’t seem hard to believe until you take a look at the bar’s opening in 2019.
At the time, The Reveille published an interview with then-manager Christian Grimaldo, who explained that he wanted to “tie [the bar] to LSU in some way…to give the student a better experience than they’ve gotten used to with the offerings in Tigerland right now.”
Notice the drastic change from “the student” in 2019 to “…grad students or people that just graduated that may still want to party and socialize in the Tigerland area that doesn’t necessarily feel like they are in Tigerland” in 2021.
Yes, that’s a real quote from Former Dead Poet Associate Manager Justin Burnett. Let’s dissect that.
So, the new Dead Poet is tailored for graduate students and recent graduates. I see two problems here. Problem one: graduate students don’t all start graduate school at age 23. A lot of them go straight from undergraduate to graduate school, putting them at about 21 or 22 years old. Problem two: recent graduates are also usually around that age.
According to the Fall 2020 LSU Fact Sheet, 22,179 undergraduate students enrolled at the University have a permanent address in Louisiana. Sounds like a lot, right? Not after you take a closer look at the Trend Data for Fall 2020 Enrollment and realize that only 6,679 of those come from East Baton Rouge parish. 
My guess is that the majority of students from parishes outside of EBR will graduate and completely forget they ever wanted to try out that new cute bar just off campus. Essentially, that means Dead Poet is going to permanently lose a huge customer base by shunning undergraduate patrons.
With this realization in mind, it becomes obvious that the bar isn’t meant to be a safe haven for older students looking for a chill bar to socialize at; rather, it’s more like a treehouse with a big “NO KIDS ALLOWED” sign.
I really never thought I’d need to point this out, but 21-year-olds are not kids and 23 is a completely arbitrary age limit to put on adulthood.
Another 2019 article from 225 Magazine quotes Grimaldo as saying he wanted Baton Rouge to have one bar “that you could bring your parents to or get a nice cocktail without having to worry about getting your shoes dirty.”
The implication here is that students as well as their parents should be welcome at the Dead Poet, but the new restrictions say otherwise.
The new management at Dead Poet clearly isn’t concerned with creating a fun and elevated option for students but rather with creating an exclusive club that feeds on a sense of elitism and superiority.
Of course, Dead Poet is within its rights to do whatever it likes, but given its location and the pre-existing bar scene in Baton Rouge, it doesn’t exactly strike me as a sound business plan.
Marie Plunkett is a 21-year-old classical studies senior from New Orleans.