This blog has long chronicled the special thirst of university students in Wisconsin, America’s #2 drunkest state. The University of Wisconsin Stout is an alcoholic standout even by Wisconsin standards, and, in an effort to reduce the carnage, the school has attempted to shut down some particularly grotesque local bars.
UW-Stout seems to have started with the hilariously named Rehab Bar, featuring an all-day Intervention Fest, and routinely offering all the booze in the house for a few bucks. Pretty much everyone in there seems to be drinking illegally, etc. etc.
The understandably pissed off owner, faced with a chancellor and a city council determined to put him out of business, agreed to be shuttered on the condition that his liquor license be transferred to his buddy Elizabeth Hart, another bar owner.
So the council looked into Hart’s business practices, and it turns out… Well, it turns out that a lot of bars are pretty disreputable joints…
Based on [a] five-page background report … Menomonie Police Chief Eric Atkinson recommended that the council deny [Hart’s] application, a recommendation that was echoed by UW-Stout Chancellor Bob Meyer.
In a memo, Meyer expressed his concerns about the proposed transfer to an Eau Claire group he said is “associated with establishments that target college students with drink specials [and] would perpetuate the current high-risk drinking culture that exists at the Rehab.”
Although Hart had only one traffic contact on her record, her husband, Jared (Jed) Hart — who has also been known by more than two dozen other names — was charged and federally convicted in 2014 of tax fraud that took place in from 2008 to 2011 in regard to The Pickle [one of the Harts’ bars] of Eau Claire.
Eau Claire police provided a list of complaints associated with The Pickle and the Pioneer, most of them reported or witnessed by Jed Hart. Included in the violations were battery, drugs, disorderly conduct, counterfeit money, theft, check person, death, and parking issues.
Janessa Stromberger, assistant city attorney for Eau Claire, told [the investigator] that in the past few years since Jared Hart was released from prison, “his establishments had been more cooperative and easier to deal with.”
He’s a real pussycat now! Nothing like time in the federal pen to turn you all soft and nice… Real good role model for the kiddies, too… I ain’t goin’ back there and I don’t want to see you get in no trouble either…
Despite the many advantages of turning Rehab over to the Harts, the council rejected their application.
The mug shot that says Dismiss me.
… you’d hit the bottle too.
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[Darrell] Griffith’s boss, Dr. David Dunn, the executive vice president for health sciences and U of L’s top doctor, was placed on leave earlier this month pending the outcome of an FBI and campus investigation into whether he misused university funds.
The first time an SEC school’s fan base violates the [don’t-rush-the-field] rule, the institution will now face a $50,000 fine, which is 10 times more than the previous penalty. The second offense carries a $100,000 fine, and any subsequent offense will result in a $250,000 fine.
[The University of South Carolina] already has two offenses …
“So if it happens again, we would be subject to that third offense which is $250,000,” Jeff Davis, Associate Athletics Director for Operations and Facilities… “So that would come out of operating funds, and would be a huge blow.”
They go to these things, they pack their colons full of poorly-prepared meat products, they get cripplingly drunk, they slur along with the chorus of some moronic alcohol anthem, they get into their minivans and pick-ups, they drive home arguing the whole way and they hit a tree five blocks from their house and die instantly.
Straight out of Flannery O’Connor.
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But hey you can’t argue with this local commenter’s math.
If 53000 people attended and 300 were ejected that is less than 1% of the attendees. Which means 99% of the crowd behaved, were not drunk, were not making fools of themselves. Where is that story?
The Italianization of the American campus is an established fact, and things are getting more squalid by the day.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed gazes with undisguised disgust at the shit-strewn mess that some American universities and environs have become and asks…
Oh, I dunno.
You know.
I mean, lots of people ask…
Lots of people wonder – the alcohol-epidemiology program director up there in this post’s headline wonders – why the rights of sodden frats and cynical bar owners trump the rights of people who actually come to college to … well, to come to college.
But eventually things get so disgusting…
When applications at the most twisted, predatory schools start to tank (Dartmouth’s are down by fourteen percent) because so many people are disgusted, their leaders suddenly talk tough and confess that all this time they’ve been really grossed out by what Bucknell’s president labels the “self-degrading” behavior of their students… Suddenly they feel compelled to share that they’ve all been living a nonstop nightmarish performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and they want it to stop now…
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UD used to think that one potently symbolic alcohol death, one wrenching hypothermic babe in the woods demise after a night of underage drinking, might rivet some attention to the Italianization… I mean, stories like Sandra Lommen’s at freezing Bemidji State University certainly haunt me… You would think that Lommen’s pitiable end (staggering into a frozen creek while trying to walk home at night after a party) would rile people up a bit…
Colleges in Wisconsin and Minnesota get quite a few of these particular student deaths – disoriented by drink they wander into the night, fall into creeks, drown or freeze… Things got so bad at Lacrosse Wisconsin area schools that a group of fraternity guys started a river-watch program…
Things that you would not do at home
Come naturally on the floor.
And it never has had any comment since the curious 2008 death of one of its faculty in a private plane crash. People who knew John Borchers at Stanford added their praise to this glowing obituary; and only if you bother scrolling down to the very last comment on the story do you discover (details here) that Stanford had hired a man with ten years of substance abuse behind him, and that Borchers took his plane up with the following substances in his body:
In addition to cocaine and Prozac, toxicology tests by the FAA turned up opiates, mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic drugs…
A raging addict was treating addicts at Stanford University, and Stanford never got anywhere near acknowledging that, much less explaining why it thought it was safe to have this man in patient care.
… Borchers was … under investigation by the Medical Board of California and in danger of losing his medical license. According to the NTSB, an April 22, 2008, accusation by the [Medical Board of California] “documented a history of substance dependence and abuse for more than 10 years preceding the accident, involving the misuse of at least four different substances (including alcohol) and treatment through at least six different programs for substance-related disorders during that period.”
A raging addict took a plane up at night, and if he hadn’t managed to crash it into a mountain, he might well have crashed in nearby Incline Village, killing people.
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So, the problem with failing to acknowledge mistakes like this is that they keep getting made. Look, for a recent case, at how many incidents it took before the University of New Mexico dismissed its chief lobbyist.
Chief lobbyist. The person who represented the university to the state government. A huge alcoholic, he’d racked up his third DWI (plus a non-DWI alcohol-related arrest) before the university finally pulled itself together and fired him.
This man is well-connected (‘son of longtime state Rep. Henry “Kiki” Saavedra’) and in a vastly corrupt, crony-ridden state like New Mexico I suppose that takes you some distance. But even in that context… Jeez.
The Oshkosh campus of the University of Wisconsin is number one among the nation’s colleges and universities, according to this guy, for alcohol-related arrests among its students.
The schools of the state of Wisconsin – famed for its hearty drinking culture – do well across the board for drug and alcohol related naughtiness (see the last chart on this page).
Reflections on the modern American distillery.
A graduate student at UD‘s school – George Washington University – kills his best friend in a drunken rampage.
…. which seems to be going down a stupid-violent-corrupt-university To-Do List.
Along with all of the other blessings of university-sponsored alcohol sales at football games (extra police, obnoxious behavior, etc.), you’d think making a profit would be a no-brainer. You charge thirsty idiots immense sums for camels’ piss — What could go wrong?
The University of Minnesota fought so hard for the right to sell booze at its stadium… Its president lobbied and testified… UM students deserved alcohol…
And it won! But now… Where’d all the money go?
Chico, California, the town, and Chico State University, have a lethally dangerous drinking problem. UD‘s been following (scroll down for background stories) the several recent alcohol poisoning student deaths there, and Chico State’s years of efforts to make them stop. But it’s an old – a very old – story in Chico, the business of drunk and disorderly. The town’s just like that, and the university conforms to the ways of the town.
This article, in Chico State’s newspaper, describes a community meeting in which a preliminary discussion of solutions took place. The idea is to get town and gown to cooperate… But this will inevitably involve asking Chico’s wall to wall bars to cool it on three for the price of one specials, etc. And UD just doesn’t think that’s going to happen.
Meanwhile, Chico State’s boozy rep precedes it:
“The reputation that the school has received, deserved or not, seems to be affecting the type of students that apply,” [one participant] said, citing … surveys… that show a 13 percent increase of incoming freshmen classified as “high-risk drinkers” over the national average.
Year after year, Chico State admits a lot of freshmen already very serious about their drinking, people who know they can drink in comfort, with plenty of company, on that particular campus. I have no idea how you change this fact.
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And at the University of Virginia, where two students had to be put on life support for alcohol poisoning (both have recovered), the head of the Greek organizations there says:
“You hear stories about people dying and thankfully here we’ve never had that situation but it’s possible, so it’s scary and we’re going to take any steps necessary to prevent that from happening…”