All Jokes Aside: High Street bar crackdown leaves students wondering when underage drinking became illegal

Ricky Mulvey, Seth Shanley
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 15:50:47 +0000
Opinion, all jokes aside, Big bar, Columbus Police Department, cpd, dj, dubstep, high street bars, high street underage, local economy, Midway, mr. brightside, ohio state, ohio state university, street meat, street vendors, underage drinking, underage ohio state

The main entrance arch of Bullwinkle’s. Credit: Lantern file photo

If Midway plays an aggressive dubstep remix of “Mr. Brightside” and no freshmen are around to hear it, did the DJ even make a sound?

Stroll down High Street on a weekend night and you will notice that fewer college students are hitting up the bars. The rest have been given underages. The Columbus Police Department has been shocked — absolutely shocked — to find that students under 21 years old have been consuming alcohol at High Street bars. So CPD decided to make a change.

Some students complain this change is leaving fewer entertainment options on weekend nights. Really, it’s created a new freshman tradition: calling your father crying because you were arrested for an underage at Bullwinkle’s.

Big Bar, the 18-and-up club above a doughnut shop that was never cool enough for you, will soon be the cockroach that survives this nuclear fallout.

This crackdown has left Ohio State students wondering when underage drinking suddenly became illegal. Where are the documents that allow this crackdown? This is CPD unjustly attacking the local economy.

The crackdown is nothing but an assault on small businesses.

The street meat workers, the campus-bar entrepreneurs apathetic to underage drinking and the hard-working counterfeiter will all suffer financial backlash.

Going to bars is a right, not a privilege.

Having strangers constantly bumping into you while you shout to hear your friends is a defining feature of the college experience.

Attacking local discotheques like Bullwinkle’s and Midway not only affects the students who are too young to be there, but also the creepy adult men who are too old to be trying to pick up the underage girls.

This is an essential dynamic to the campus bar economy. Without it, these bars will likely close.

The bar crackdown pushes college drinking out of the public eye and into the safe and watchful wombs of house parties, dorm rooms and communions.

Drinking in college is better when you consume alcohol while quietly watching intense, sweaty men play beer pong. But do not count on house parties staying untouched for long.

Off-campus houses need to be demolished for more luxury apartments.

This crackdown comes with a brightside. Once all campus bars have been shut down, Ohio State will have more room for chain restaurants, parking garages and, if we are lucky, another Verizon Wireless store.