Shiny lights, rollin’ dice

Of the majors and academic programs that IU students can pursue in their college careers, one is strangely absent from our admissions list – one that would allow many students to attain 4.0 GPAs the way guys with British accents get girls. Financial irresponsibility. From spending too much money at the bar to eating fast food every meal of the day, students spend their own (or their parents’) money like it grows on trees. One reason students find themselves penniless besides ever-increasing tuition rates is the horrible evils of gambling – booze and cussing included.\nSo when a report was released this week showing the poor performance of the French Lick Resort and Casino, ranking low in gross revenue, admissions and amount won from each person entering the casino, this columnist’s mind got to churning and came to a logical conclusion. As much as I love Bloomington and IU, I have unfortunately learned in my time here that while the area is full of nice people, many of them are also foolish saps with no sense of money or profit. It would therefore be smart to move the struggling casino 60 miles north to our own humble college town. Here’s why:\nFor starters, when college kids sit at a poker table they are either drinking or engaging in some other illegal activity. I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat playing Texas Hold’em sipping Mountain Dew while my counterparts get sloshed, or slaughter-housed (or whatever other drunk term you prefer – perhaps shmammered). The upshot is, I usually take the pot on those nights, finding myself fifty dollars in the green while the others find themselves piss-drunk and pissed off.\nSecond, the number of rich kids whose parents could care less what their children are spending money on is a distinct social group on any college campus. While some of them will no doubt be smart enough to take the house on occasion, most of them throw away pictures of dead presidents without a care in the world.\nFinally, people in Bloomington simply have more money to spend. The average income per household in French Lick is a little more than $27,000 a year. The average in Bloomington, on the other hand, is a little more than $37,000 a year. It is apparent and a seemingly easy assessment to make that a casino would do much better in our town. That’s a difference of $10,000 dollars a year to waste stupidly at a casino that stacks all of the odds in its favor and is built to take your hard-earned money.\nSo as long as a casino in Bloomington could attract the college students, keep the drinks on ice and offer hope to the seemingly hopeless, it would do much better than the one in French Lick. Add the central location of Bloomington to the mix, and it will be draining Hoosiers of their income for years. God bless capitalism.