Last year, when college towns throughout the state were hit with Project 21, one of the major concerns on Student Government’s mind was the reason the Illinois Liquor Control Commission was targeting college towns.

Now, more than a year after the project was implemented, the program created to crack down on underage drinking in Illinois has expanded from eight to 55 cities in the state.

However, the program still seems to create discomfort in the Student Government office.

The program creates a hostile relationship between students and the city and police by simply raiding bars, instead of creating a sort of a compromise or connection between the student body and officials on underage drinking, said Marty Ruhaak, student vice president for public affairs.

But the director of the program sees it a different way.

Project 21 is designed to get to the root of the underage drinking problem, which is to crack down on the places where minors buy liquor, said Marie O’Brien, director of the under 21 program and Project 21, which educates minors and liquor license holders.

Expansion

It’s common knowledge that underage drinking exists outside college towns, but when the project began in August 2001, the commission only targeted towns like Charleston in which the majority of the population is college students.

What the Student Government wanted to know, Ruhaak said, is why the project targeted college students when underage drinking exists outside of college towns.

As a result of a survey conducted by the commission that showed 65 percent of college students had bought alcohol in the last 30 days, O’Brien said they decided to target college towns and do compliance checks at bars and restaurants.

Although at first the commission targeting college towns, it has recently expanded the project to 55 cities throughout the state. Those cities were chosen based on their rate of failure with State Police Alcohol Counter Measure Enforcement compliance checks.

College cities that had a high rate of failure were added to the list on Project 21. Charleston was among those cities with a failure rate of 57 percent, which meant four out of seven places that sell liquor in Charleston were selling to minors.

Aside from the information the commission gives to freshmen students about underage drinking, O’Brien said they wanted to target the root of the problem which is the places that are selling to minors.

Thus, they are implementing phase two of the project, which is trying to educate bar owners, employees and liquor license holders.

Education

By educating the people that sell liquor, O’Brien said the project is not trying to stop minors from drinking, but from being able to buy alcohol.

“We’re going to have to go to the source and the source is where they get alcohol,” she said. “Are we stopping it completely? No, but we’re making it more difficult.”

Many of those who attended the commission’s meetings on underage drinking never learned basic underage drinking laws, and O’Brien said were never fully trained.

Two of those laws were the “happy hour laws,” saying you cannot serve a customer with more than one alcoholic beverage and can only serve a pitcher if there is at least two people ordering it.

In addition, there is a law saying you cannot serve someone who is intoxicated, which carries a fine of up to $2,500 or a year in jail, she said.

“There’s no training in the bar industry,” O’Brien said. “They just put them out there and tell them to sell.”

By training the bars, restaurants and any place that serves alcohol like Wal-Mart, which failed a compliance check in the last six months, O’Brien said the sale of alcohol to minors should decrease.

Students want a voice

As a voice for the students, Ruhaak said more should be done to create a relationship between the commission and students instead of a hostile one of simply raiding bars.

“The emphasis is on busting everybody instead of educating people on it,” he said.

In addition, Ruhaak wants to get the student’s voice out that underage drinking is not as bad as it seems and although college towns are prone to it, so are many other cities throughout the state that may need the attention that college towns are getting.

“It’s not as bad as everyone’s making it out to be,” he said.

O’Brien said in addition to Project 21 the separate under 21 program handles educating students of the consequences of drinking as a minor, including the financial consequences of a fine up to $2,500.

“They are more concerned about the bottom line, and to a lot of college students money is the bottom line,” O’Brien said.

But Ruhaak said educating students is practically non-existent and fairness of Project 21 throughout the state is as well.

“As far as I know it’s been education in 55 cities it hasn’t been to the extent as it has been (in college towns),” he said. “I don’t see them making an effort to come down here and educate.”

However, O’Brien said it is not the commission’s job to monitor each step of the project in the 55 cities. The commission has already held a meeting educating bar owners, employees and liquor license holders, but after that it is up to the city and state police to follow the laws they have talked about.

Students Need a Voice in the Project

In all, Ruhaak said he would like to get the student’s voice on the table, but without an active student body there will be no voice.

In the past few weeks, the Student Government has been working to increase voter registration which will begin to achieve Ruhaak’s goal of getting Eastern’s opinion of Project 21 to state legislators in Springfield. But that, he said, depends on a dramatic increase in student voters.

Currently, about seven percent of the student body are registered voters, a number which Ruhaak said will have no affect on legislators in Springfield. But, he said, if more students voted, legislators would realize Eastern does have a voice and more push for our ideas will be made.

The next step, Ruhaak said, is to work with neighboring universities in Champaign and Carbondale and with legislators to consider students’ opinions and know that they are a voting population. A plan Ruhaak would like to follow through with include lobbying in Springfield, which heavily depends on Eastern’s voting population.

If Ruhaak were to go to Springfield now with 700 students out of 11,000 voting, “they’re going to laugh in my face,” he said.