COLLEGE TOWN STRIVES
TO CORK FLOW OF BOOZE

Andrea Jones
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 11/01/05

Statesboro — The trembling Georgia Southern University freshman arrived an hour late for Laura Milner's English composition class this summer.

Tearful and smelling of alcohol, the 18-year-old metro Atlanta native told Milner she'd blacked out after a night of downing free liquor at Ladies Night at a local dance club. Had she been raped? Sexually assaulted? She didn't know. She couldn't remember.

Shocked, Milner took the student to the counseling center and, soon after, started asking questions around campus.

In the months since, the professor's quest for answers has put binge drinking on the front burner at this school of 16,000, pitting local officials and university administrators against college students, many of whom insist they are mature enough to make their own decisions about alcohol. At the center of the storm? A local politician who owns two of the most controversial establishments in town.

Today, Statesboro's City Council will vote on stringent new amendments to the local alcohol ordinance that include banning happy hours and drink specials at all restaurants and limiting to one per customer at a time the number of drinks that can be ordered.

'Dangerous drinking'

This is not the first time students and city officials have clashed over alcohol policies in Statesboro. The city began allowing liquor by the drink less than 10 years ago, and the surrounding county of Bulloch still bans liquor sales in stores.

Nancy Waters, chairwoman of Statesboro's alcohol control board, which drafted the amendments, said the city owes the changes to Georgia Southern parents — many of whom are from metro Atlanta — who expect that their children will be protected when they drop them off at school.

"The goal is to curb this kind of dangerous drinking," Waters said. "Someone has to look out for students."

Waters said the board did not set out to punish law-abiding restaurants, and in a meeting last week recommended that happy hours be allowed from 5 to 7 p.m. That option will be considered at today's council meeting in addition to the board's original proposal for a total ban on happy hours.

'Date rape night'

The push to change Statesboro's alcohol policies began in earnest in September, after Milner showed a standing-room crowd at a City Council meeting poster-sized pictures from "Ladies Lock-Up" night at the Woodin Nikel, the club where her student blacked out.

A bartender wearing a black contraption on his back resembling a giant bug sprayer funneled neon-green liquor directly into students' mouths. Milner, who went to the club with a fellow professor and two students, said she saw underaged freshmen, including some of her own students, drinking. Some were chugging alcohol as club employees chanted and encouraged them to drink more. The women inside drank free liquor for two hours before the doors opened at 11 p.m. to a line of men waiting to pay a cover charge to get inside.

"Some students referred to it as 'date rape' night," Milner said. "It was unbelievable."

The owner of the club? William Britt, a 30-year-old Georgia Southern graduate and member of the City Council.

The city has since yanked Britt's alcohol license at Woodin Nikel and at Legends, another establishment he owns near campus, for failing to prove at least half his profits came from food, a requirement for all Statesboro restaurants with liquor licenses. The alcohol board is also auditing seven other establishments to make sure they meet the 50/50 requirement, Waters said. So far, only one has turned in paperwork.

Britt said the city just hasn't accepted the fact that Statesboro is a college town and that students like to have a good time.

"If you took the college out of Statesboro, there'd be nothing left," he said. "Instead of allowing business owners to address issues, they're just making decisions that hurt everybody."

Amendment vote tabled

Britt said his staff checked IDs and used wristbands to separate the over-21 partiers from the underage ones.

"But if someone buys a drink and hands it to someone who is underage, it's very difficult to catch them," he said.

After the revelations at the September meeting, the alcohol board made its recommendations for amending the city's ordinance. The City Council was scheduled to vote on the amendments at its October meeting but tabled action after hundreds of students and townspeople showed up to voice their opinions.

Britt will be banned from participating in today's discussion and vote because of a potential conflict of interest, said George Wood, Statesboro's city manager.

Paul Ferguson, director of Georgia Southern's Health Services, said he's not out to ruin anybody's good time. But college students — especially freshmen away from home for the first time — don't always make the best choices.

"We have an obligation to take care of them and protect them," Ferguson said.

In recent years, Georgia Southern has seen a major influx of students from Atlanta. Now, 40 percent of students on the campus, which boasts white-columned brick buildings set amid rolling hills, hail from the metro area.

Georgia Southern has long had a party-school reputation. The university recently received a grant from the state Office of Highway Safety for an alcohol education program and seed money to start a safe driving program that would offer students rides home from local establishments.

Waters said the support of Georgia Southern's senior administrators has been a key to the fight to curb drinking. The university's attorney, Lee Davis, spoke in favor of the amendments at the October board meeting.

"We have never had an administration so committed," Waters said.

Students oppose changes

Ferguson, who has been at Georgia Southern for about a year and a half, is a fatherly figure around campus. Student workers in the health clinic routinely stop him in the hall for a chat, a hug, a handshake or a request to borrow his minivan for the weekend.

Last month, he spent six hours on a Sunday matching student health reports with establishments the students had been to earlier in the night. Of three reported sexual assaults from July to October, all were underaged women who had reported alcohol abuse at the Woodin Nikel. Of the seven concussions, six had been drinking at either the Woodin Nikel or at Legends, and five of those were underaged.

"You can have all the anecdotal evidence in the world, but the numbers don't lie," he said. "This was just plain wrong."

Ferguson said shutting down those two clubs was the first step to curb binge drinking. Some students say they will just turn to more house parties, but Ferguson said the pressures to drink hard liquor without eating tend to be less in those situations. The key, he added, is educating students more to avoid dangerous behavior when they drink.

Meanwhile, hundreds of students have signed a petition opposing the additional alcohol amendments. Georgia Southern senior Nathan Queen, the general manager of Retriever's, another popular bar and grill across from campus, has led the effort. Queen offers drink specials and happy hours at his restaurant and said the amendments are too strict and that the city should just enforce its existing ordinances instead of creating more.

"Why should a bunch of 50-year-olds be deciding what 18- to 24-year-olds need to do?" he asked. "It's not fair."

The students who were lined up Thursday night outside Retriever's in flashy tank tops, ball caps and fashionable jeans tended to agree.

Katie Rushing, a 21-year-old pre-pharmacy major from Statesboro, sipped on a free rum and Coke at a table with her friends. It was Ladies Night, and women paid a $5 cover for a plastic cup they could refill with liquor drinks until 11.

"If one bar messed up, that doesn't mean everybody should get punished," she said. "If people want to drink, they're going to no matter what."