MSU board considers ban on alcohol in public

[struggle4progress]

Exceptions would be made for tailgating; 'behavioral problems' are under review.
By Charles E. Ramirez and Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News

EAST LANSING -- Drinking alcohol in most public areas of Michigan State University's campus could be banned under a proposal officials are considering.

The Board of Trustees also is looking at making it easier for police to ticket for public urination. The changes are aimed at controlling unruly behavior on campus, particularly during football weekends. Several incidents this fall, including a series of drinking-related rapes, prompted the proposals. <snip>

Public urination previously was covered on campus under disorderly conduct statutes, where conviction made the offender guilty of public exposure and required placement on the state's sex offenders list.

"We wanted to make it something we could enforce without putting someone on the sex offender list," Porteous said. "It gets at the problem and makes it easier to enforce." <snip>

http://www.detnews.com/2005/schools/0501/16/E01-60997.htm

[Occulus]

1. Public urination?

How about, oh, I dunno, maybe BUILDING BIGGBER BATHROOMS or something? Perhaps a public toilet or two?

[debsianben]

2. I Told You So

I'll say what I said when I ran for MSU Board of Trustees last year (http://burgisformsuboard.spmichigan.org). MSU students are all legal adults, and there's something basically wrong with the idea that people have fewer rights because they go to college instead of starting to work full-time the second they get out of high school. Joel Ferguson and the rest would think twice about this kind of condescending garbage if current laws made it easier for MSU students to vote where they lived, rather than demanding that they trek back to their home districts to vote there. Of course, these same Trustees who are horrified at the thought that letting 21-year-old college students drink inside that huge city-within-a-city where they live might (horror of all horros!) lead to public urination seem singularly untroubled by the thought that ROTC & military research at MSU might lead to a lot of dead Iraqis and dead MSU graduates.