Letter to The Editor

Imagine you just aced your biology exam, you are at your favorite bar, and you just got your favorite drink. The only problem is that you are also under 21. Two sips later, the cops burst into the bar, arrest you, and take you to the police station. You’ve had other friends arrested before, and you know that you will have to pay a hefty fine but your not sure exactly how much. You’re waiting in jail for the bail bondsman to arrive, and you start wondering if your going to be able to afford that book from Paw Prints they didn’t have in the first place. You also heard a rumor that the college can also punish you to for underage drinking. All that you wanted was to reward yourself and have some fun, but tonight your bar tab is going to a lot more than you expected.
This is my third year at college, and for two of those years I partied downtown underage. Luckily, I was never arrested for underage drinking, but I have bailed many close friends out of jail for breaking the same law. I went to the Milledgeville Police Station to request some statistics partly out of curiosity and partly out of anger. These statistics were on the number of arrests for possession of alcohol by a minor since 1999. In 1999 there were 68 arrests, in 2000 there were 141, and in 2001 there were 207. I have a tradition of going downtown regularly since 1999, and live noticed that the trend of underage drinkers hasn’t changed much. The only thing that has changed is the amount of effort Milledgeville has put into stopping underage drinking. On a typical Thursday night last semester cops raided each bar at least three times a night. Thursday, January 17, 2002, was one of the worst nights for underage drinkers. Cops would arrest someone drinking underage, take them to the station, write them their ticket, and come back to raid the bar again. One zealous cop was reported to not even writing the ticket because it took away precious time to bust students. If you are outraged by this do not direct all your anger towards the cops, but instead be mad at a policy directed towards students.
Fewer disruptive and drunk college students is not the only benefit that the city of Milledgeville receives, for they have also gained a large revenue from fines. The fine up until this year was $120.00, but now it has more than doubled to a fine of $360.00! Last semester, Georgia college added a separate fine of $25 dollars plus a mandatory Alcohol 101 class, regardless if you were caught on campus or not! So if You’re a student at GC&SU arrested for underage drinking the grand total is $385.00 plus the inconvience of taking an alcohol-awareness class. Since 1999, the city of Milledgeville has collected approximately $50,000 dollars in fines from 427 charges of possession. This was computed using the old fine, 416 charges X $120, plus the new fine, 11 charges X $360. There have been 11 arrests already this year, and if this rate remains constant, about 200 arrests will be made and approximately $72,000 in fines will be collected!
Does this punishment not seem a bit excessive? I know that drinking underage is illegal, but from the history of Prohibition and my own personal experience I believe that this policy will not stop underage drinking. The only thing the policy may change is where drinking underage occurs. This policy can hurt students in places other than their wallet. As more and more students realize that underage drinking is impossible downtown, they will go to parties. Cops will be able to stop the parties where most students live, so students will go to parties further away from where they live. Students may go to parties not within walking distance to where they live. This will tempt them to drive home under the influence of alcohol. In Milledgeville’s efforts to keep students sober and safe they may cause them more harm than good in the long run.

Daniel Hall

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 25 2002. Filed under Letters to the Editor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry