“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
- Louis Brandeis

Over the last few years there has been a continuous feverish fretting by university officials over the dangers of “binge-drinking.” The term and definition itself are simply the creation of ivory-tower intellectuals trying to create a controversy and draw attention to their publishings. We see the same thing with studies on that horrible threat to the fabric of our society, “road rage.”

The very term “binge” is purposely designed to invoke images of drunkenness. However, the arbitrary definition of binge-drinking, four drinks for a woman and five drinks for a man, gives no weight to: time between drinks, size of a person or individual tolerance. The absurdity of the term “binge-drinking” becomes apparent when you realize that if a woman has two beers before a football game and two beers after a football game she has engaged in this dangerous activity.

Various “Temperance Think Tanks” have claimed a litany of social ills associated with drinking. There is no question alcohol can exacerbate inherent antisocial behavior in a very small percentage of drinkers. However, for the vast majority of people, consuming four or five drinks over the course of a few hours is an enjoyable experience that never causes any more trouble than a hangover.

Unfortunately, this fact is lost on our erstwhile nannies in the city and university that feel the need to treat young adults as children that need all the sharp table corners covered with foam and all the electric outlets covered with little plastic caps.

The crisis atmosphere surrounding this matter is out of proportion to any real threat, especially if one examines it with a historical perspective. In the early ?70s, this city and university lived through student street riots that required tear gas to control, yet they did not enact limits on drink specials back then. This contrasts starkly with today?s students who have proven to be remarkably well behaved when it comes to celebrating.

In recent years State Street has made it relatively unscathed through Saturday night Halloweens, Super Bowl victories and losses, Final Four berths and losses and Rose Bowl victories. Events such as these have resulted in violence at many other universities across the nation, but in Madison problems have been limited.

It would even be reasonable to ascribe this tendency toward nonviolent celebration to the controlling influence of State Street bars. This becomes especially clear when one juxtaposes recent “State Street” oriented celebrations with the riot that occurred a few years ago on Mifflin Street, where bars played no role in the “block party.”

Contrary to what city and university officials claim, there is no “drink-special crisis.” Truly deep discounts on drinks are almost exclusively offered Sunday through Wednesday. These are week and school nights and not the nights on which most disorderly behavior occurs.

The deep discounts on weeknights are not a call to “binge-drink.” Rather, they are an attempt to make it affordable for students to go out to a tavern and relax with a few drinks after a day of work or studying. Happy-hour specials have always existed for this purpose; it just so happens that for most students the “work day” often ends around 10 p.m.

The fact that students have only a few blocks to walk home is an important factor in their decision to drink more than what appears sensible to middle-aged, suburban, commuter politicians and university bureaucrats. The nannies? narrow-minded examination of the “drink-special crisis” ignores the fact that drinking and driving, the undeniably greatest social fall-out of alcohol, is virtually nonexistent for most State Street taverns. This is because 95 percent of their patrons walk home, and for the 5 percent that don?t, most taverns provide free cab fare through the Tavern Leagues Safe Rider program.

Rather than the demagogic scapegoating they get from politicians, the Tavern League and its members deserve accolades for the groundbreaking Safe Rider program that provides a substantive solution rather than bureaucratic intrusion.

The Tavern League is concerned that university and city officials have been sucked into the unfounded hysteria about “binge-drinking” and will enact frivolous laws that are antithetical to common sense and individual freedom. The answer to antisocial behavior by a tiny minority of drinkers is to punish individual offenders, not to trample over the rights of citizens and businesses to engage in free commerce.

Far more dangerous than real or imagined concerns about drunken students walking home a little wobbly is the specter of self-righteous bureaucrats continually looking for excuses to extend their control into the commercial and social lives of adults.

Dick Lyshek is the owner of Bull Feathers and the Tavern League ALRC representative. He is a former UW student.