Raising the bar

It’s the first summer session, and most of IU’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates have left Bloomington to return to their families, go on internships, travel, work summer jobs, tend crops and so on. Parking has become available, and traffic ... well ... isn’t quite as bad. During the day, Bloomington is sleepy and quiet, with only a few summer students shuffling from place to place.
But at night: The grad students rule.
Not literally, of course. But loads of us are still here, and our workloads are reduced. And like a mighty machine abandoned for lack of fuel, an entire local industry based around the mass production of intoxicated undergrads lies at our disposal. But much as an engine needs to be converted from regular gas to diesel, the Bloomington bar scene could use some changes to help it smash grad students at the most efficient rate possible:
• Make good beers affordable, rather than making cheap beers super-cheap. Grad students aren’t rich, but we do tend to have more rarified tastes – and few things are as disappointing as going to the pub and finding that the only special is on Bud Light. Also, we no longer have 21-year-old (or, considering cheap beer’s consumers, more likely 18- or 19-year-old) digestive tracts. I’m sure that serving mass quantities of super-cheap beer is profitable during the school year – but since you can’t sell mass quantities during the summer, maybe another approach is warranted.
• The music: “If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” goes the sneer. Well, all right jerk, maybe we are – but we’re the ones at the bar with the folding money; and we’re there to visit with friends and chat each other up, not be pummeled by the bass line to the latest glorified ringtone limping up Billboard’s pop charts. And while yours truly would be happier with newer music – I suspect many of my colleagues would appreciate it if you made an effort to work in some hits from 5, 10 or 15 years ago.
• Studying. Probably the greatest barrier holding back grad students from going out is the need to study or the guilt of not studying – but why does study have to be divorced from the consumption of (moderate amounts of) beer? Check out all the people hanging out at the local bookstores and coffee shops sometime and ask yourself: Why couldn’t a pub do that?
• Trivia night. Alcohol and competition have a well-established relationship, of course; as do academics and efforts to establish intellectual superiority. So why not combine the two? Let us form teams and settle our long-standing intra- and inter-disciplinary grudges somewhere other than in the letters sections of journals. And make it hard – we don’t need no wussies answering trivia.
• Card us. Yes, we might have gray hair, crow’s feet, bald spots and bifocals – card us anyway.
At the end of August, the undergrads will return, and Bloomington’s watering holes can return to business as usual. But for now, you’ve got us, and we’re gonna be thirsty.