Unofficially Disturbed

So we had a bit of an event here at U of I this past weekend. I'm sure if you were in town anytime Friday or Saturday afternoon you saw people out and about celebrating quite energetically. But what exactly were they celebrating?

Getting drunk off their asses, is what. Of course, the "official" reason is that they were celebrating Unofficial St. Patrick's Day. This day was created by bar owner Scott Cochrane in 1996 in order to allow students to celebrate St. Patrick's Day while still at campus, since the real day often fell over Spring Break.1 Originally, just his bars celebrated the event. Shortly, though, other bars and stores realized just how much money Cochrane was getting, and wanted in on the action. It's grown quite a bit since then, and now it pulls alumni and students from all over the Midwest back to Champaign-Urbana to raise a toast (or 21) to Unofficial.

There's a bit of a problem with that, though. Ask almost anyone who's wearing green, they'll say the day is "Just another excuse to get drunk."2 Whatever symbolism Unofficial may have had to Cochrane, the day has simply become a Day of Alcohol. Two men were hospitalized from alcohol poisoning before noon on Unofficial. Public pictures from Unofficial can be found here. The amount of sheer willful bending of the law in the pictures says quite a bit on how limits were perceived that day.

Now of course, the University has attempted to mitigate the harm befalling their students. Visitors were barred from staying overnight in the (mainly freshmen and sophmores) dorms and getting free lodgings. Rather reasonably so, since all the freshmen, sophmores, and half the juniors are below the drinking age. Extra security was positioned around the University during the day, ejecting people from classes for being drunk or carrying alcohol into class. A letter was sent home to parents of the students, asking them to talk to their kids about Unoffical and underage drinking. Champain and Urbana took some action as well, ordering bars not to open until 11AM and to admit only those aged 21 and up, as well as stationing a heavy police presence on the streets.

Which rather begs the question, why not simply ban the day, or at least the liquor? This "tradition" was started by a bar owner to drive up business, nothing more, and now has gotten completely out of hand. Admittedly, local businesses get quite the uptick in business, but at a rather heavy price. Streets, apartments, and people are completely trashed, fights break out at bars, and underage drinking goes through the roof. Derek Roetzer, manager of the Flat Top Grill near Wright and Green, said that Unofficial drove away most of his local business, replacing it with drunken students. Seems like there really isn't anything against banning the day, other than money.

Except the Constitution, of course. Bars, restaurants, and whatever other organizations want to have the freedom to promote and talk about whatever events they want to under freedom of speech. It doesn't matter that the event has caused problems in the past, or even that the cities can show that the next one will too. Terminiello v. Chicago established that a speaker could not be held liable for "disturbing the peace" by his speech, even when that disturbance was two large mobs fighting each other. Even with all the alcohol around, the crowds on Unofficial hardly approached that benchmark of devastation, and so, the promotions continue. The best actions against Unofficial that can be taken are simply those of mitigation, arresting individual perpetrators and increasing security checks in public places and on University property. So local residents and students mark the calendar for next year, one for avoidance and one for jubilation, and the saga continues meandering in a tipsy line til the next round comes.

1 http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2009/03/09/News/Bar-Restrictions.Create.Mixed.Opinions.On.Safety.During.Unofficial-3665035.shtml

2 http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2009/03/06/News/Students.Visitors.Get.Early.Start.On.Unofficial-3663627.shtml

Edit: The link has been updated, and works for my computer. Sorry if it doesn't for yours.