When Council Member Michael LaDue walks around his Campustown neighborhood after a particularly successful football game things can get pretty rowdy on Green Street — more raucous, in fact, than the 2008 Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, a two-day brew-ha-ha devoted to drinking, which LaDue called “uneventful.”
The event cooled its heels a bit this year after the City of Champaign and University of Illinois implemented new restrictions, including a “No Visitor” policy at the dormitories and a strong police enforcement on the street. And although the morning after included piles of puke on the sidewalk and bottles littering the lawns, statistics for arrests were down.
But Mayor Gerald Schweighart, also acting Liquor Commissioner, felt the City of Champaign needed to do more to curb underage drinking on campus. In a 6-3 vote last night, the council passed an ordinance granting Schweighart emergency powers to enforce a 21 and up limit on bar entrance for special events, particularly looking at next year’s “Unofficial” celebration.
Council members Tom Bruno, Ken Pirok and Michael LaDue voted against the new restrictions.
Bruno pointed to the fact that the new restrictions will most likely push the parties into private homes, an unregulated environment where revelers will be less likely to call the police if the party gets out of control.
The alcohol sale figures for the last 5 years on campus — since the city has ratcheted up efforts to kill “Unofficial” — show that liquor by the drink at campus bars has remained roughly level, but package sales have “quintupled,” Bruno says.
“The question is whether the addition [the new regulation] does as much good as potential harm,” LaDue says. “I think it has the potential to do at least as much harm as good, and as a response to Unofficial specifically I think it’s reactionary.”
Schweighart cannot enforce the restriction without a 24-hour advance notice.
“I took this as another tool in the toolbox…with the expectation that the liquor commissioner will use this judiciously and if it doesn’t work won’t use it again,” Council member Marci Dodds, who voted for the ordinance says.