No Beer, Cavalier

People of Charlottesville, lock up your kegs. Others are trying to tell us when and where we can drink.

The tragic death of fourth-year student Leslie Baltz has been turned into a message for us all. Following the lead of many Eastern colleges, U.Va. is threatening to ban kegs. The pure stupidity of this threat is readily apparent -- it certainly wouldn't have prevented the accident over Thanksgiving, for example -- but the appearance of action at the university is important.

Is there anyone who thinks that anything should be done about drinking? That anything could be done? The issue is almost entirely a matter of personal responsibility. You can't stop people from drinking in their off-Grounds apartments. Kegs are illegal in the dorms, so banning kegs would probably only affect fraternities (most of whom lease land owned by the university). And if kegs are banned, most fraternities would only move their parties off-Grounds; the net result would be more people driving drunk. As raising the drinking age and prohibition should have taught us, there just ain't no way to separate people from their God-given right to drink until they pass out.

The university knows this, of course. They have no intention of actually banning kegs. Right now their main concern is the Capital Campaign, and many of the alumni who donate money come from the Greek system. The alumni are aware of the damage banning kegs would do to their fraternities, and, not wanting to deny future brothers the right to make pledges drink until they pass out, would be very upset at the action. Administration law: never do anything that might make future contributors upset.

So knowing that they couldn't possibly follow in the footsteps of JMU and actually do anything about alcohol related incidents, the administration writes outraged letters. They send out news releases. They create task forces. They hold administrative discussions. They all come to the same conclusion: drinking is bad. Something must be done. It is covered thoroughly in the pages of the CD.

But even the CD realizes that all this activity is an exercise in futility. Leslie Baltz's death is senseless. All the meaningless rhetoric and posturing of the anti-alcohol campaigns couldn't possibly have prevented it.

Viewpoint consists of the majority opinion of the managing board of The Declaration and is written by the executive editor on a weekly basis.