An on-campus pub? Does our campus really need a bar? This is a topic students, staff and university administrators have debated for years. So, when I read Stephen Murphy's Aug. 30 article, "On-campus pub-making the dream a reality," I read it with particular interest and utter dismay. On the one hand, I was interested because I wanted to examine Murphy's claim. On the other hand, I was dismayed because Murphy's contention that LMU ought to have a venue that serves adult beverages to students is specious and disconnected-to say the least.
Murphy's article offers readers an emotional claim that some high school seniors were required to make a "tough call" in their decision to attend LMU, as they potentially agonized over which school to attend based on the fact that SCU serves alcoholic beverages to some of its student body while LMU does not. Such a claim is ludicrous.
To suggest that a "high schooler" made his or her decision to attend a Catholic Jesuit institution based on if alcohol is sold there is disconcerting. This mindset denotes that these perplexed teens would either currently be drinking adult beverages or would be partial to drinking a cocktail in the future. As an urbanite, I refuse to buy into such a silly, incongruous notion, for it suggests we care more about "having a 'tavern'" than about our educational pursuits.
A closer reading of Murphy's article foreshadows his bias and subverts the article's claim-although he is not willing to admit it in print-as the editor in chief, his language and style of writing strongly reveals his willingness to provide underage drinkers with alcohol, which is a violation of California law and contributes to the delinquency of minors. To that end, my brief research into Murphy's claims and my subsequent critical analysis have verified that other institutions-Georgetown included-have expressed serious reservations about instituting alcohol policies that split the campus student body across either ethnic or age-specific lines. These points are glossed over in "Making the dream a reality."
Georgetown's student newspaper expre-ssed concerns that different ethnic groups "party" differently, so, a pub would further separate students down ethnic and age-specific lines.
Although Murphy admits that there once was a vendor that provided students with adult beverages, what is lacking is the reason(s) why the University removed or banned the previous vendor. To that end, Murphy's conventional view that LMU lacks energy and is not an enjoyable "place" is another declaration that has been rehashed on campus for years. Yet, he admits LMU has worked to make social condensers-the place where citizens of a community or neighborhood meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact with others-more valuable over the years. As city dwellers, we are all concerned with "place." So, the introduction of a "third place" (the first being one's home and the second being work) is crucial to LMU's community development, for a number of reasons. However, it seems at first blush that the crux of this yak centers on urbanity. For that reason, let us not vilify or condemn the culture, let's embrace it. For, such emotional appeals are deflated by frivolity. Murphy claims that adding a bar to our campus would "increase school spirit and give LMU the 'college feel that it often lacks," but nothing can be further from the truth, as one does not beget the other. Adding a bar to our campus-may add a third place-but it will not inherently make LMU have the "college feel" it lacks. Such injudiciousness is an insult to me as a student because, politics aside, the college feel comes from you, from me. Katie Kicks supports this notion in her, September 14th, article titled, "Getting Out at LMU.
Hard work, determination, a desire to grow intellectually, and finding one's self-spiritually, emotionally and academically-are hallmarks of a secondary education not the quality or amount of beer we find on campus. Besides most of the students old enough to drink adult beverages live off campus anyway. As if I needed to add more, does anyone else feel that it is unethical for a professor and a current student to sit in a bar and become acquainted? Is that not a conflict of interest? Doesn't the introduction of adult beverages between professors and students potentially blur the lines of academia?
Before we add a pub on campus, may I make some alternative suggestions? Want to get to know your professor? Meet them during office hours, seek and find out more about the "take a professor to lunch" program or engage them in "corridor talk." Do anything except ask them out to a tavern, for that is a slippery slope! If you don't think so, consider MIT psychology professor Steven Pinker's definition of a slippery slope: "a tricky precarious situation, especially one that leads gradually but inexorably to disaster: '(Without) a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being . . . we approach a slippery slope that ends in the disposal of inconvenient people.'"
As for school spirit, that is something that has been talked about for ages and it starts with you and I-not a saloon.
