Just recently in my town an issue has come up that has my whole campus in a fluster. I was reading my colleges news paper and right on the front page, first article, in big bold letters, "OUTDOOR DRINKING GAMES MAY FACE A BAN"

Ok, being a local to my town for the past 9 years and I am now also a student, I have realized how biased this "News Paper" actually is. To begin with, the reason this ban has been brought up because there is over 75 Beer Pong Tables outside on peoples porches (it is currently fall and its cold so there where a lot more). However, the article made this sound like they wanted to ban this because it is in order to prevent alcohol abuse and underage drinking. However, being a local and know the true reason, which was barely stressed in the article. There are a few reasons, I will list them as most important to least important.

1. Causes Noise Disturbance - My proof of this is I know quite a few local residents who live near the off campus housing and from Friday-Monday morning can't get a wink of sleep because of it being so noisy every night. Reason why its so noisy, according to my sources they can tell by what they are saying that they are obviously playing Beer Pong and other various drinking games outside of their homes.

2. The Image of my Town- Com'on, if every person had a Beer Pong Table outside on there porch, what would you think of the town...if you said a town for of alcoholics you are correct. Its bad enough that Friday-Monday the town looks like a drinkers paradise because there's so much trash and beer cans everywhere. We don't need that Monday-Sunday.

3. May Prevent Alcohol Abuse and Underage Drinking- This is last on the list because if my town was actually going to tackle this issue, they would close at least one of the 6+ bars in town.

Anyway, most of the article was trying to prove that just because someone has a beer pong table doesn't cause crime, alcohol abuse, and underage drinking. Unfortunately, being someone who has lived in this town for 9 years straight years, not 4 half lived here years, I can tell there's a difference, when the college students are here and not. We use to not have that much crime, even when the college students where here, now for the past two years it seems like every time the college students come back we get put on the local news for some beating or rape.

Reasoning? Just recently, I have never seen a beer pong table on someones' porch until last year, and I do stay in town and driver threw the college areas quite frequently ever since I got my drivers license. The crime issue didn't start getting bad until last year.

Connection? Maybe, because drinking games cause people to drink more then they should, which then causes stupid actions.

The next thing the article stressed is that college students don't have that much of a say in this town. I can defeat this in one sentence. "If that's the case then why do we have 6+ bars in town?" If anything they have more of a say in this town then those who actually live here 365 days a year.

Most of the college students I know are saying this will never happen and they will be free to play beer pong outdoors when ever they want. However, my town has managed to ban all indoor furniture being placed outdoors and this caused the same frustration with the students.

I'm just wondering what other peoples opinion is on this issue, since all I'm hearing from my student body is "That's just stupid. We should have a right to have our Beer Pong Tables outside.", either that or "You should write an article concerning this issue and send it in." To me this shouldn't even be considered second page news and the college students need to stop crying about it. Its kind of their fault to begin with because they made it in to an eyesore and earsore.

Edit: I would post the link to the article, but the way the news paper has their website set up it makes people not registered unable to view the article.

 

 

 

Reply

Well, the college kids do have a right to say what they want. Alcohol in general is bad as we all know, but if the college kids didn't have alcohol, they would be furious. There might even be more crime without the beer pong tables. If they took them away from the college kids, that college would probably have less students (I guess that's a good thing if you live there). So I have to say that the beer pong tables are bad, but if you got rid of them, there would certainly be some chaos. Perhaps they could slowly take them away.

Reply

Yeah you make a point, with my luck we would end up with a riot and the whole town would go in to chaos. Either that the parents would go complain and take the issue all the way to supreme court. Interesting enough there was yet another artical written in the newspaper in the opinion section this week, about how unfair the ban was.

Basically the artical was trying to compare old ladies playing golf well drinking wine. Unforutently, keep in mind, Old Ladies at least don't drink the whole bottle every time the get the ball in the hole. Plus the fact, to me at least, it doesn't seem like that good of a support artical, because I don't see old ladies running around protesting this whole issue. The fact is that most locals here don't drink at all, because the bars are always flooded by college students and when they are not they don't even drink that much at all. So I'm getting the image that the person who wrote this artical in is one of those students that is only here during the Spring and Fall semesters and hasn't seen my town when there are no college students around.

 

 

 

Reply