Columnist’s Note: I didn’t interview anyone from the Campus-Community Coalition for Change because they didn’t interview me.
What Baton Rouge needs right now is a makeover. Bulging with more people than ever due to natural disasters and more students than it knows what to do with, the city really does not need to welcome people and their money by doing something as idiotic as eliminating drink specials.
The Campus-Community Coalition for Change got its proposal to the Metro Council, and Wednesday those arbiters of social norms get to fascistically decide how restaurants and bars sell their alcohol. Will it change the amount of alcohol people drink? Will it reduce the dangers associated with drinking in these public spaces? Will it do anything? Nah.
Prohibition worked, right? Yeah, sure. Using the same principle, however, the CCCC plans to create a safer collegiate environment. We can still buy alcohol in stores, and we can still drink it at our houses. We can still buy alcohol in restaurants and bars, and we can still drink it at our restaurants and bars. The catch is that they’re making the different ways of marketing alcohol in restaurants and bars narrowed in to one way, which unless I’m mistaken is “one drink, one price.”
The argument has been framed before that because we students are presented with cheap alcohol, we binge drink. What the CCCC elders obviously do not recall from their own youth is that it isn’t the price that makes us drink; it is the fact that we are celebrating our youth.
Students drink to celebrate. We celebrate finishing a class or a hard test. We celebrate the fact that the other sex is finding some interest in us. We celebrate anything we can simply because we can.
The dangers that arise from this celebration are not to be lightly overlooked. Driving under the influence can cause irrevocable harm to oneself and others. Binge drinking can lead to severe health problems and death. The CCCC should be praised for having as a priority our own health and safety. It shouldn’t be praised for the lackluster creativity it has for trying to improve our health and safety.
Federal drug enforcement officials and the CCCC share a common problem. No matter how you stop the supply, you aren’t curbing demand. Students still want to drink and will can find alternatives to the drink specials.
If students are no longer attracted to bars for their drink specials, students will simply drink at their houses. That pronoun “their” is pretty tricky because I don’t mean to imply that students will simply drink alone.
Students will have parties with cheaper booze (and I’m afraid that’s a figure the CCCC can’t compute, but I’ve never given more than $10 to a house party for entry and never paid per drink). Students still get drunk; students still drive; students still drink and drive. The problem still remains – only in this scenario there is no one at the door checking IDs, no bartender saying who has had enough, no bouncer breaking up fights and less tax revenue going into the city coffers!
Perhaps the CCCC would instead like to increase the number of noise violations, “minor in possession” citations and “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” citations while not effectively changing the rate of binge drinking and drunk driving in the area surrounding LSU. Perhaps the ordinance should have been brought to the Metro Council by a councilman representing an area near LSU. Perhaps the CCCC should rethink the measures that look good on paper but only provide lip service to those funding the program.
Here’s another thought: there are more students at LSU than there were people voting in the two districts represented by the men who brought up this ordinance when they were elected – by a lot.
 
Lake is a history senior. Contact him
at [email protected]