Inebriation Revisited

It's been almost six months since an MIT first-year died after entering a coma with a blood alcohol level of .41. In the weeks after the tragedy, college, police and government officials seemed to be tripping over each other in their rush to denounce the use and abuse of alcohol. The UMass schools moved to ban it. Deans Archie C. Epps III and Harry R. Lewis '68 released a statement about it. And two poor Harvard first-years were arrested for buying it. But sources of power and authority in the lives of Harvard students have, thankfully, been relatively quiet on the subject of alcohol as of late.

October's flurry of talk and action has given way to normalcy in March. At least that's the way it seems to me. Of course, I'm hardly an authority on the issue; midway through my second semester as a 21-year-old, I haven't exactly been preoccupied with the boozing prospects of the underage crowd. While a couple of police-related horror stories have come to my attention recently, it's a given that a certain number of underage drinkers are going to get nabbed in any year. And so it seems unreasonable--at least without further evidence--to explain the kinds of anecdotes I've been hearing in terms of a concerted law enforcement effort.

Still, I figure it's worth looking further into the matter. So I arrive at the Bow and Arrow Pub, an old time Harvard Square watering hole, at 4 p.m. on a weekday, and it's surprisingly active. Including me, there are fourteen people in the bar: Two men and two women are trading flirtations in one corner, a bunch of middle-aged men sit at the other end of the counter watching a Morgan Freeman movie I can't identify, and a couple of younger guys with thick Boston accents are talking their way through a game of pool.

It's a good five minutes before my presence rouses the attention of the bartender, an older man I don't recognize. As he sits up from where he's been lying down on the counter, I explain my business and he tells me to return at eight o'clock, when someone who knows more about the pub will be in.

When I come back the bar has morphed considerably--the kind of twenty-something banter I'm used to hearing fills the air, rising over the din of loud rock music. As I enter, a bouncer asks me to show some identification, and I flash my Harvard I.D. But he's not satisfied with that, so I fish out my New York State driver's license and hand it over to him, in the process exposing my expired, under-21 license. The guy notices the old I.D., and asks to have a peek at it as well. Finally, only after both licenses have been scrutinized and compared, am I granted admittance into the bar.

Eventually I wind up talking to John A. Alvarado '98, a familiar-looking bartender who's in his second year as a Bow employee. We talk about the bars past incarnation as a biker hangout and the "Good Will Hunting" shoot before the subject of underage drinking comes up.

Alvarado concedes that "occasionally" someone with a good fake may make it past the I.D. checker at the door, but maintains that, "we have a pretty serious carding policy, most people don't even try." I ask him whether there was more pressure from the police to crack down in the wake of Scott Krueger's death, but if he has an opinion on the matter, he's not sharing it with me. He is willing to divulge that the Cambridge License Commission has been in a bunch of times this year. Still, he can't remember them having swept the bar for underage drinkers any time recently, something it is in their authority to do.

Unsatisfied with what I've learned at the Bow, I decide to take a survey of underage undergrads, and I make the statistically unorthodox (if terribly convenient) decision to focus my attention on people I know. The dominant sentiment that emerges through a series of conversations and e-mails is that Krueger's death had a palpable impact on alcohol access. But there's no consensus about whether things have since relaxed. One member of the class of 2000 tells me that just after the MIT incident, "friends' I.D.'s which always worked were suddenly being looked at a little more closely, and sometimes even denied by people who had always known they were under 21 but had been letting it slide." Still, she continues, things seem to have been loosening up lately.

But another sophomore disagrees. While buying beer used to be easy, he tells me, the "Cops and Shops" program has made it a more dicey task. "I only use stores in which I know which clerks work at given times," he explains. "If I were to see someone else working, I'd buy from somewhere else."

Frustrated that all this talk seems to be getting me nowhere, I realize that I have no choice but to go back out into the field. So on Saturday night, I hit the bars at about 11:30 p.m., diligently making my way to three local taverns before 2:00 a.m closing. Scoping each place for fresh faced youths, I see only a handful of people I know to be under 21. And in a flash, it dawns on me: If underage drinkers are making a more substantial showing than I'm able to confirm, they seem to be doing a fine job of blending in.

Dan S. Aibel '98 is a philosophy concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.