Don't cry in your beer

Do you have a right to drink discount martinis? \nStudents in Wisconsin think so.\nAccording to The Chronicle of Higher Education, two University of Wisconsin students have brought suit against 24 near-campus Madison bars for allegedly fixing their prices in an effort to reduce alcohol consumption. The students argue the conspiracy has "transferred tens of millions of dollars from UW students and other bar patrons to the owners of the defendant bars" (March 26).\n The "cartel" began when bar owners agreed to eliminate weekend drink specials in Sept. 2002. Although not named in the suit yet, UW is in the middle of the controversy because it pushed for a city ordinance to ban the specials in an effort to curb "binge" drinking. To pre-empt action by the city, the bar owners met and abolished the practice without a public fight.\nOur take on this matter: they're all nuts.\nIf the University wanted to take a stand against binge drinking, this was not the way to do it. For one thing, bar-goers are legal drinkers and may not even be students. The University should focus on what happens on its own campus before it attempts to regulate off-campus enterprises.\nSecondly, this wasn't a logical way to curb the problem anyway. Consider what an unnamed University representative says in the suit: "When prices go up, consumption goes down" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 26). Did prohibition not teach us a contrary lesson? We think the truer-to-life mantra would be, "When prices go up, go buy Dark Eyes" -- which means the potential for binge drinking still stands. \nFurthermore, the bars didn't even raise their regular prices; they merely did away with the specials. Did the University really think this was enough to quell demand? Certainly, the bars didn't think so, and they were absolutely right; otherwise, they never would have agreed to the ban. This makes them the second culprit in this mess. Unlike the administrators, they knew college kids would drink at any price, and they stood to profit from it. \nSo was the lawsuit in order? \nWe don't think so. While we agree using price controls to manipulate public behavior is despicable, we feel using the court system to demand drink bargains is a little extreme. It's interesting that the students might have a legitimate case, but if their only concern is acquiring cheap beer, there are certainly simpler avenues to take. It's hard to sympathize with patrons who supposedly collectively lost "tens of millions of dollars" to these bars when they could have just partied somewhere else. \nIn essence, all parties bear some kind of guilt in this case. You've got a misguided administration influencing business owners who agreed to engage in less-than-legal practices that left overreacting students to file lawsuits over regularly-priced Cosmopolitans. We can't wait to see how it turns out.