More than 18 months have passed since Policy Alternatives Community Education (PACE) persuaded nearly every downtown bar in Madison to join a “voluntary” ban on weekend drink specials. In the time that has lapsed since approximately two dozen such establishments sunk their teeth into PACE’s delectably forbidden fruit, students have choked on the apple’s core of increased alcohol-related violence and decreased capitalist activity.

At least 23 downtown drinking establishments now find themselves as defendants in a class-action lawsuit, brought by a group of Minnesota lawyers who understand that, unlike that of Beijing, Madison’s economy is market-based. In essence, when the downtown bars all fell in line with PACE, they allegedly colluded to fix prices, a violation of United States antitrust laws.

When Sue Crowley, the Project Director of PACE, sat down with this board for an interview in early March, we challenged her, “The bar owners aren’t particularly angry with you because they’re making more money now.” Ms. Crowley happily retorted, “I know that,” and then went on to state one of the overriding objectives of PACE’s project: “price [students] out of over-consumption.”

The only problem with this situation is it is not PACE’s place to regulate Madison’s economy, no matter how benevolent their intentions ? market regulation is a job wisely reserved for the government. And while the 24 bars named in this lawsuit (including Spice’s, which is no longer in business), are certainly to blame for playing along in this price-fixing scheme that only served to benefit their bottom lines, one must realize that the apple never would have been in their hands had Ms. Crowley and PACE not placed it there.

Still, questions are to be asked not only of the tavern owners who have profited from this venture but of the University, too. One very notable “bar” has never offered a drink special and, hence, stood to gain greatly from the ban: the Memorial Union Terrace. Only serving to compound the image that the Union ? an institutional funded entity ? was a beneficiary of the drink special ban is the fact that the terrace’s weekend hours expanded until 2 a.m. right around the time the ban came into effect. At best this is an ugly coincidence, at worst this is collusion, but either way there is certainly an appearance of impropriety that the University ought to have avoided.

During its tenure on the UW campus, PACE has made some respectable recommendations, like the addition of late night food service to bars and the creation of alcohol-free events. But the group’s loudest action, the drink special ban that they recently sought to expand to cover weeknights as well, has only served to disrupt Madison’s once-peaceful environment. Indeed, PACE has yet to see a decrease in the sort of violence it claims to be combating, having done more to eliminate students’ limited financial resources than Madison’s alcohol problems.

PACE’s grant doesn’t run out until 2006, but now would seem as ideal a time as ever for the organization to either reconsider its position on the drink specials ban or gather its belongings and slither its way out of the Garden of Madison.