Ryan Burke is tired of being left out. The 19-year-old construction management freshman can not go to bars with his girlfriend because he does not meet their age requirements.
“It sucks, I always feel like I’m holding her back,” Burke said. “The bars let the girls in because every older guy is looking for a younger girl — that pisses me off.”
Many Baton Rouge bars have different age requirements for males and females, said Sam Terito, co-owner of Northgate Tavern and a University graduate.
“It discriminates guys,” Terito said. “I don’t see how it helps to discriminate.”
Northgate Tavern allows men and women in when they are 18, Terito said.
Fred’s Bar & Grill refused to go on the record except to say that to enter the bar, women have to be 19 and men have to be 20.
Bogie’s Bar & Grill, Reggie’s and Tigerbar could not be reached to confirm their rules.
Sogo Live allows both men and women into their venue when they are 18, except on Saturdays when men have to be 21 to enter, said Abe Kinney, general manager and co-owner of Sogo Live.
“We have the right to refuse service to anyone really,” Kinney said. “There’s no one mandate that gives us control, but all clubs do it.”
A public business does not have the right to discriminate against anyone, said Faye Philips, chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, a University group that researches and reports the “climate” for women on campus.
The bars in Baton Rouge are privately owned, but unless they require membership, they are public accommodations, said Joe Cook, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Louisiana.
A public accommodation is a place that is open to the general public, Cook said.
“Public accommodations can’t use selective criteria for admission,” he said.
Bars cannot discriminate because of gender or age unless there is a compelling reason to do so, Cook said. “There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason to do that here,” he said.
The situation can be interpreted as either sexism toward men or exploitation of women, said Amber Vlasnik, manager of the Women’s Center, a “one stop shop” for women’s issues.
Some bar managers cited “maturity” as the reason for the differing age limits for women and men.
“The older the guys are, the more mature they are, and the less problems we have to deal with,” Kinney said. “And, guys tend to run with girls who are younger than them.”
Others said that maturity was not the real issue here.
“It’s sexist towards girls — the way guys look at it — to go to ladies night to pick up drunk girls,” said Monica Jenkins, a construction management junior and president of Women Organizing Women, an organization that raises awareness about women and feminism.
“There’s not that much of a difference between a freshman or sophomore girl and a freshman or sophomore guy, especially those who are going out,” Terito said. “It’s a meat market mentality and it’s what’s wrong with Baton Rouge, I don’t buy it as being anything else, not a maturity issue.”
The “meat market mentality” theory is very concerning, Vlasnik said.
“It’s concerning whether that’s the intent, but I don’t know of any other intent there could be,” Vlasnik said.
Christine A. Corcos, a University associate law professor, said some state legislatures used to allow women to buy alcohol at an earlier age than men can because they believed that women tended to mature more quickly.
“In a case called Craig v. Boren, decided in 1976, the U. S. Supreme Court found an Oklahoma state statute unconstitutional on Equal Protection grounds because it discriminated against men for precisely that reason. The statute allowed women to buy beer at the age of 18, but didn’t allow men to buy the beer until they were 21, because the legislature had made a finding that men between the ages of 18 and 21 were more likely to drive drunk than women in that age range,” Corcos said. “The Court held that the law reinforced gender stereotypes and struck it down.”
Different policies for different sexes are nothing new, and Terito is doubtful that anything will change, although he said it is important to recognize what is going on.
“It’s been going on for so long, I don’t know how you could stop it,” Terito said. “Bars do it in all cities — I don’t think it’s going to change.”