After the first few weekends of the Fall Semester, the Indiana State Excise Police are preparing for the first home football game of the season.
Cpl. Keith Rinehardt, a field supervisor, said officers will be present at the game against Eastern Michigan, as they always are at home games.
"The first game is usually, obviously, a little more busy because it's new," Rinehardt said. "It's the first one of the year for all the students, so usually more students attend it. But as the games go on, usually fewer students start attending, the weather gets colder."
Rinehardt said officers will be focusing on two things: traffic and underage and binge drinking, both for the safety of students and the general public.
Because of a federal grant, officers are now working toward Intensified College Enforcement. The purpose of ICE is to reduce underage drinking and use of alcohol at Ball State as well as five other Indiana universities: Butler, Indiana University, Indiana State University, Notre Dame and Purdue University.
Rinehardt said officers are not doing anything different as far as their work goes. The only difference now is how publicized their efforts are.
There is a lot of misinformation about how excise police do their work, Rinehardt added, and the ICE program is a way to show how their efforts can be a benefit to the public.
"Some individuals might think that the only focus that we have is to issue a drinking ticket to a student and just move on with our night," Rinehardt said. "And that's not our goal. Our goal is to make sure that kids are safe, that the parents that are sending their kids to these universities are confident knowing that there's individuals like us out there to ensure their children will be safe while they're down there. That's our ultimate goal."
During move-in weekend, officers issued more than 50 citations at Ball State. That number went up to 77 the first weekend of the Fall Semester.
Rinehardt said it is hard to tell why that number went up but that Neely Fest could have been a contributing factor.
"Both times [last year and this year], during Neely Fest, it seems as though that we as a department and Ball State seemed to be a little more busy with just general calls and criminal activity going on, underage drinking, fights and stuff like that," he said.
Ball State and Muncie were not the only areas being targeted by excise officers this weekend.
Officers arrested 10 individuals Friday and Saturday in Broad Ripple near Butler and ticketed 10 more.
Charges included illegal possession or consumption of alcohol, furnishing alcohol to a minor and public intoxication.
Boilermakers and the Fighting Irish weren't exempt from the excise police with officers arresting 18 and ticketing six in West Lafayette and ticketing 29 people on 43 charges in South Bend.
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