This weekend, excise police issued more than 50 citations to 34 people in incidents related to minor consumption of alcohol. These 34 people have received their wake-up calls. Maybe.
Underage drinking is not something that goes away. Though Ball State's citation numbers are down from the 93 issued during the same weekend last year, it's hard to say whether that's because fewer people were breaking alcohol laws or simply breaking them less visibly.
Officers can't be everywhere at once; there's no telling how many of Ball State's students celebrated the start of classes illegally over the weekend. Even if they did, what are the chances they felt bad about it?
The United States is one of only a handful of countries with a legal drinking age set at 21 - the oldest limit of any country where alcohol is legal. Students who travel abroad have opportunities to drink in the places they visit - without any stigma or fear of incurring negative consequences.
Like it or not, the prevailing attitude in most of the U.S. is that alcohol is a way of life on college campuses. That's seen in movies, elsewhere in the media and in neighborhoods just off campus.
Legal or not, people drink.
Maybe the 34 people who met excise police officers this weekend have been changed by their brushes with the law. But it's hard to obey a rule that seems to get so little respect from so many of the people to whom it applies. And it's far easier to succumb to the invitations of friends in a culture of drinking that seems far more real and relevant than heed an arguably out-of-date law occasionally enforced by excise police.
Not that alcohol should be a free-for-all for everyone. Drinking and driving is never okay, and few would argue that there shouldn't be some sort of age limit for alcohol consumption. But it might be time to reconsider our nation's alcohol laws.
Students have a lot of power; if they wanted to get behind a cause, who knows what could come of it.
Alternatively, everybody could keep avoiding the excise police. Good luck with that.
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