COLUMN: "I Want Bourbon and Beer"

From Bruce Forman's "Shaking The Tree," Spring '92. Cruising in and out of bars on Bourbon Street and in the French Quarter, he has had no worries about not getting in or not being served. He is a freshman at Tulane University no less! I cannot begin to estimate the loss to society due to the misallocation of college students' energies and talents while scheming for fake IDs. These resources could be plowed into community service or some other productive use. Instead we are forced to spend time slaving over the color copier in Vance Hall, searching for the easiest state license to copy. Or we're forced to pester "of age" friends for duplicate licenses. Or we'll go so far as to masquerade into some local bureau of motor vehicles as an of age person to snag an unimpeachable ID. My brother has no such worries. He can go and do whatever he wants. He has his choice of dozens of bars and clubs open 24 hours to entertain him. I have three or maybe four lean options. No one has benefitted more from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board crackdown on Smoke's than Murph's. Now, I can risk life and limb and venture 10 blocks off campus into the heart of West Philadelphia for a brew. Who in their right mind would travel so far into dangerous territory if they didn't have to? With a lot of forethought, the LCB is trying to strengthen ties between students and local criminals. It's an excellent outreach program, putting us in touch with gun-toting community leaders while we're drunk. Smoke's would be cool, but my lawyers are still preparing a case to convince the bouncers to let me in. I'm still waiting for mugshots and fingerprinting before I can make it past them. I guess I don't do a good enough screen test for the videocameras. In reserve, there's the Palladium. I dig the atmosphere, but I find it ridiculous that I'm paying the same prices there for a drink that I would at Bradley's or Au Bar in Palm Beach. Lastly, there are fraternities. But they've instituted this Bring-Your-Own-Beer policy. Now I am supposed to bring beer to parties -- because, as you know, fraternities never, ever provide alcohol to partygoers anymore. At least we still have fraternity parties. · INDIVIDUAL MISTAKE: It's true that a ZBT brother was expelled from Penn on rape charges. But it is equally true that the ZBT fraternity was not involved in this misconduct. This is not so clear from the Daily Pennsylvanian article. Unwittingly or not, the article was framed in such a way that implicated the entire house for one particular individual action. For all intents and purposes, the student's fraternal association was irrelevant to the story. If the DP feels that this one facet of a student's profile is paramount it must then be consistent about applying it. But I feel they're a bit selective in publicizing a student's membership in a Greek organization. The DP failed to mention that Mark Wallace, who was accused of cheating on a statistics exam, is a brother of Kappa Alpha Psi. Why was Kappa Alpha Psi not emblazoned on the front-page in association with this offense? More importantly, why does the DP minimize a student's membership in a Greek organization when something positive is accomplished? COLORS week is over and the two main organizers, Sigma Chi and Alpha Phi Alpha have not received the credit they deserved. The two biggest philanthropic events I've witnessed on campus, Stand Up Against Homelessness and the Penn Against Cancer Ball, were organized by members of the Greek system. Relative to when a individual Greek member does something stupid, his or her Greek association is rather muted by the newspaper when something substantive and beneficial is accomplished. · FUN FOR ALL: Speaking of the Penn Against Cancer Ball, it was a smashing success. Over 700 students showed up and had a great time. It was a lot of fun and people left with the thought that we ought to more things like that, and soon. · Bruce Forman is a junior Finance major from East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Shaking the Tree appears alternate Mondays.

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