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The Cause of and Solution to All of Life's Problems

We are here to drink beer.

-Charles Bukowski

THE WAR ON UNDERAGE DRINKING

The prohibition of alcohol, often called the Grand Experiment, ended in 1931, an inglorious twelve years after it was signed into law. Instead of forcing the American population to learn to live without the intoxicant as intended, the 18th Amendment set the stage for an organized crime syndicate that endured for decades after.

The mostly religious movement "worked," in the sense that it made a noticeable, however small, dent in the nation's drinking habit. Undeniably, less alcohol was consumed during these years than had been before. On the other hand, it clearly did not work in the sense that it simultaneously spawned an influential racket that merely traded alcohol for gambling and then narcotics once the Amendment was repealed.

In wealthy metropolises, powerful crime families became de rigueur, quenching the populace's thirst with cut-rate booze, cranked out of bathtubs on short order; in the countryside, two-bit moonshiners answered the same demand with corn liquor "rotgut." Whether the backdrop was ritzy New York hotels or backwoods Ozark hovels, Prohibition paved the way for millions of dollars in black market revenue.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then Prohibition almost literally financed the stretch of I-15 into America's hell incarnate, Las Vegas-itself the brainchild of mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Malone. The grand lesson of the endeavor should have been apparent in the first place: the demand for alcohol is inelastic. Legal or not, the people will have their vices, and they will damned well get their hands on them one way or the other. Al "Scarface" Capone, who at one point was spending $1500 per diem to headquarter his operation out of the posh Metropole Hotel, made certain of that.

True to human nature, American society failed to learn from the Grand Mistake. Today, the War on Drugs appears to be failing, in part, for similar reasons. By the same token, parallels between Prohibition and efforts to curb underage drinking are not easy to overlook-and nowhere is the War on Underage Drinking fought more fiercely than on today's college campuses.

In the West University neighborhood alone, the Eugene Police Dept.'s so-called zero tolerance policy propelled the number of drug and alcohol citations from a combined 79 in 1996 to an astronomical 300 in 1997. In July of this year, the Eugene City Council approved a motion to raise the maximum fine for a Minor in Possession of Alcohol from $100 to $250, aiming to correspond with the state's current maximum. These are only a few local examples of a nationwide trend that has been developing in the last few decades. (Prohibition, Part II, OC v. XV, i. XIII) In the 1980's, Congress passed legislation that would deny federal highway improvement funding to states that did not raise the minimum drinking age to the current standard: twenty-one years of age.

In many ways, this postmodern incarnation of Prohibition is even more hopeless than its predecessor. Alcohol is easily available to the majority of society; preventing the transfer of the substance from legal to illegal hands is nothing short of futility. (Capone himself even took the shortcut of importing legal whisky from the booze-swilling Canucks north of Chicago.) Acquisition of alcohol by minors is no more complicated than the collection of "beer money," a quick ride or walk to the nearest convenience store, and the anxiously awaited return of the procuring 21-year-old, furnishing six-packs and half-racks stuffed in Jansport backpacks. Every day, this ritual is performed countless times across the nation, and is wholly unremarkable. Security guards may ward off the slightly riskier gambit of shoulder tapping, but between consenting "adults," little can be done to halt the flow of suds into the dorm rooms and livers of the marginally-rebellious college student.

THE BEER BARONS OF UNIVERSITY HOUSING

Commonplace as it is, the find-someone-to-buy-beer routine is also tedious and inefficient. False identification is a frequent answer to this dilemma (and a cottage industry all by itself), if one is willing to risk the Class C Misdemeanor. Another is to stock up: one undergraduate the Commentator interviewed told of a five-case hoard of Milwaukee's Best Ice he kept in his dorm room's overhead closet. Operations not dissimilar from the mob-run underworld of the Roaring Twenties can arise in great concentration of the necessary factors. Naturally, minors + furnishers / authority = illicit schemes. College dormitories are often such crucibles, and the UO, true to its Animal House heritage, is no exception. During the 1998-99 school year, four undergraduate dorm residents conducted a highly successful black market in the University's on-campus residence halls. The operation, which ran for several months until the year's end, managed to stay well below Housing's radar, pulling thousands of dollars through a single residence hall, all for the expressed purpose of providing several hundred University Housing residents with one simple vice: beer.

In circles close to the affair, the four became known as the "Beer Barons,"-cribbed from "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment," an episode of the influential Fox television program, The Simpsons. In the show, an antique law is discovered on the Springfield books, restricting the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Local saloon Moe's Tavern shuts down, and the town is forced to go dry-that is, until the ubiquitous Homer Simpson reinvents himself as the "Beer Baron," manufacturing spirits in the family basement. Crusading against Homer's Scarface is U.S. Treasury agent Rex Banner, a latter-day Eliot Ness.

The story behind these residents' enterprise is well served by the metaphor. Under the teetotaling surveillance of Housing authorities, the four devised a fail-safe plan to get drunk, get everyone else drunk, and make a tidy profit in the process. On condition of anonymity (and that they be allowed to choose their own eccentric nom de plumes), Lando, Murdock, Slutface and the Captain-the Beer Barons-gave the Oregon Commentator full access to their operation, sharing their experiences with and attitudes toward the verboten intoxicant. While potentially unsettling to advocates of modern drinking laws, their views are inarguably representative of many a college student.

Inspiration for the venture came in the parking lot of the Emerald Distributing Co. at 880 McKinley, on the second week of spring term, a Friday afternoon. Six residents, from the same floor of the same hall, pooled their money for a keg of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve; since Murdock had the car, and Lando the proper identification, they were elected to jump through the necessary hoops toward obligatory Friday night drunkenness.

While the 7-11 on Franklin or Tom's Market on 19th and Agate are, going by sheer proximity, likely the most common sources of alcohol for residents, the distributor is considerably less-frequented; the logistics and vehicular requirement alone are intimidating enough to keep away most casual drinkers. Yet Murdock, a veteran driver on illicit runs to area supermarkets, discovered an astonishing lack of security. "If you go to Safeway, there's a certain amount of sketch in sitting out in the parking lot waiting for someone to buy two cases of beer. At the distributor, they didn't care. They didn't even question that we were filling out a dorm address for the keg [registration.]"

The beer and keg deposit paid for, Lando returned to the car, ecstatic with a discovery of his own: "He came out and said, 'I just found out we can buy twelve cases for cheaper [than the keg] in individual dock specials.'" Dock specials are cases left over on the loading dock, sold at discount rates. "If it's sitting on the dock, it's their clearance beer. If you can get that, you can get a case of Henry's for seven dollars," Murdock explained.

Back at the dorms, the keg was tapped. The returnees shared their discovery with the rest of the cramped room, remarking on the inconceivable values at the distributor. "I had to hear the prices three or four times before I could even begin to comprehend how cheap it was," the Captain recalled. It was during this conversation that Lando first introduced the concept of selling beer. The advantages to such an endeavor were not exactly mind-boggling. "We could go cheaper than 7-11," the Captain reasoned, "and it was perfectly convenient." Indeed, they were in a unique position to capitalize on these circumstances: there was more than one vehicle at their disposal, an inordinately willing furnisher, and not least the distributor as a key trade secret.

The phenomenon of a keg in the dorms, it should go without saying, was a popular idea. The keg attracted residents from other complexes, numbering approximately thirty-five-this was unusual, even for the self-described party hall. It was so successful, in fact, that the venture was unanimously approved just a few days later. Lando, waxing poetic, declared: "We knew we had a calling to make beer available to everyone."

Lando, Murdock, the Captain and Slutface each contributed twenty dollars U.S. (the other two, without the currency to kick in, became Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best to the Barons' Fab Four), and the following weekend, Lando and Murdock returned to the distributor. Ten cases of a variety of Henry's were loaded into Murdock's hatchback by dock workers, and an unprecedented volume of beer was driven across the border into dormland. "The first time, we were all real sketch about it," Slutface recalled. "We didn't know how we were going to get all the beer inside." In the end, the Barons called on the help of a few neighbors to run incriminatingly cumbersome backpacks, one by one, into the hall.

Once the beer was behind closed doors, a network of word-of-mouth advertising went up almost immediately, in true pyramidic fashion. By the evening's end, not only had they doubled their money, but they also had something more elusive: free beer. The philosophy was simple: "Let's sell beer to everyone. For twenty dollars, we'll be able to drink free for the rest of the year," the Captain summarized. The Beer Barons were in business.

A makeshift delegation of duties was agreed upon: Lando, the lone Baron legally permitted to keep as much beer in his room as he saw fit, oversaw inventory. Murdock's room was the Barons' primary haunt, storing both revenue and record of transactions; the Captain did the majority of the bookkeeping. Slutface, soon the regular driver and company muscle, played down the division of responsibility: "We were all pretty much equal partners."

Prices were standardized for Henry Weinhard's-far and away their most popular brand-at five dollars per six-pack, and eight dollars per half-rack. "We could sell Pabst for six dollars for an entire half-rack," Lando exulted. Overhead cost and availability dictated prices, as did relative beer quality. When polled, Old English was the unanimous victor as least favorite; the Captain denounced it as "rat poison. I don't know why the hell they bought it." On the other hand, various Weinhard's couldn't be kept in stock. "We got two cases of Blitz," he went on, "the Blitz sold out in five minutes. This campus is definitely one of marijuana smokers, and not classy beer drinkers."

In the early weeks, there was some debate among the Barons about the ethics of profiting from their friends' alcoholic tendencies, as much of their clientele came from within the hall. "The others feared that they were taking money from their friends," the Captain justified, "but I felt we were taking a huge risk, and we gave them great prices." They reconciled this in part by keeping prices low, giving away free beer on occasion, and instating a very useful concept: credit. "If you wanted beer, but you had no money, we wrote your name down, and we wrote down whatever beer you took," Murdock illustrated. Tabs were generally granted to those within the hall, and few exceptions were made. Several tabs are still outstanding, though none by more than twenty dollars. "We'd usually send Slutface out to collect tabs, but I didn't expect to get it all back. Because we had so much business, what am I going to do? Call my friend to come beat the shit out of you if you don't pay me eight dollars?"

By the third and fourth week, the Beer Barons' room was a Friday and Saturday night mecca for students all over the dorms. "We had a regular clientele of twenty-five to thirty people," Lando estimated, while the Captain put the total number of individuals served by term's end at somewhere "between two and four hundred."

For the first two weeks of business, the unwritten rule was that at least one customer out of a group had to be familiar to someone in the hall. As the Barons felt more comfortable with their partnership, it fell into obsolescence. "I saw faces I'd never seen before," said the Captain. "You know, 'Is this the place to buy beer?' 'Yeah, I'll take you next door.'" All manner of people were showing up, often asking stray residents if they had arrived at the right place. "There were people I'd never seen before. They looked like RAs. It was kind of freaky," Murdock recollected. In fact, some of them were: "There was an RA who purchased some alcohol from us. However, she was twenty-one years old," Lando confirmed.

The Beer Barons moved a minimum of twenty cases a weekend. A weekly run no longer cut it-Saturday and mid-week runs were made to avoid running out of stock, based on the now-predictable flow of customers. On this pattern, Slutface theorized: "Monday night you drink because you've made it past the first of the week, Wednesday you're halfway through the week, so you've got to celebrate, Thursday is basically the weekend, and Friday and Saturday is just obvious." Only Sunday and Tuesday remained mysteriously slow.

At the distributor, Lando and Slutface became regular customers. "They knew my name after awhile, and didn't ask me for ID anymore," the proud furnisher declared. "They just said, "You going to the beach this weekend and partying?' I'd just say, 'Yeah.'"

For better or worse, the Barons' operation was fast approaching ubiquity, and bordering on the unwieldy. "We had friends coming over from another complex, and they weren't even coming over to buy beer, but they had backpacks on, and they were approached by four different people asking were they going over to the hall to buy beer," Murdock recalled. Lando even heard about his own operation from casual acquaintances, saying, "Did you ever hear about those guys selling beer in the dorms?" Their beer market was no longer germane to a hush-hush back-alley dive, but more to that of a corner Plaid Pantry. Lando put it simply, "We had way too many customers. People were treating us like 7-11 and not a speakeasy... there were way too many rumors that too many people knew about us." The Captain put it more simply: "We were 7-11."

Selling out their stock in a few hours time, and their reputation preceding them by three and four degrees of separation, their attitude toward success started to change. This concern was magnified by a few happenstance close encounters with local authorities. The Captain described one afternoon where he walked out of Lando's room to find himself nose to nose with the complex's Resident Director. "We'd never had the authorities question us, but after making one run, I opened the door to find the Resident Director walking through the door from the stairs. The RD never looked in the room, where we had twenty cases of beer lying on the floor, minors present. They never saw anything. We had some luck in that respect."

Following another near-miss with three Office of Public Safety vans, and knowledge of their racket now a little too common, the Beer Barons decided they'd pushed their luck far enough.

After some discussion, the Barons scaled down their business, drastically. "When we figured there was a chance we might be caught," Lando corroborated, "we slowed things down and stopped for a little while," A single run to the distributor was made per week, and the Barons reluctantly turned away a steady tide of eager customers. Regardless, Slutface assured that "we never completely stopped selling beer," much less did they reduce their own alcohol intake. The occasional sale was made to friends within the hall, but the full operation was effectively called to a halt.

In a few weeks time, they reopened their doors for business, though never hitting the same stride, or achieving the same numbers as before. "Profits got pretty high at one point," the Captain said, but by now, the operation had lost much of its efficiency and formality. Record keeping fell by the wayside, and the cash flow was not as well monitored. "For awhile, we kept tabs between the four of us and what [money and beer] we took, but that didn't work," Murdock clarified, "it was more about the stacks of weed I bought with the money, the pizza we bought, and just drinking tons of beer." In any case, the Barons had done their part. "By the end," Lando admitted," we gave away a lot of free beer." Said Murdock, "I think we'll each get our twenty dollars back."

HOUSING AND ALCOHOL POLICY

Selling alcohol without a license is not in and of itself a novel concept. To cover costs, parties in the University neighborhood are given to charging an average of two to three dollars per plastic cup.

Selling alcohol without a license exclusively to dorm residents, and for financial gain, is a little bit more unique. Dorm residents drink at least as much as, if not more, than their off-campus counterparts, and for the Barons, it was an unclaimed market. The sale of marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms-and more irregularly, LSD and designer drugs-is, contradictorily enough, more common, considering that recreational drugs are no less illegal outside the dorms. "I think our high point was, for two weeks, at either end of the hall, you could buy as much marijuana and beer as you could afford," Murdock claimed. "Our hall really controlled drug consumption on campus."

Suffice it to say that Housing does not welcome the notion of alcohol (or drugs) in its on-campus residence halls, though twenty-one-year-olds, given strict regulations, are allowed to consume alcohol (but unsurprisingly, not drugs). To alleviate the misuse of alcohol, a standing army of paid University students is kept on hand to monitor their peers-Resident Assistants. Part of an RA's training is to be aware of the signs of alcohol use among residents, and part of their job description is to cite for reprimand the students who do. Not surprisingly, this policy does little to endear Housing authorities to many residents. One such authority, a former RA from the 1998-99 school year, also required anonymity before going on record about her tenure with the department.

"I think Housing considers alcohol to be one of their biggest problems," she asserted. "It is one of their top priorities." The reasons for this appear to be fairly obvious, state law being foremost. Additionally, it seems apparent that Housing feels the pressure of the assumed parental expectation-to wit, "They don't want little Johnny going away to school and becoming an alcoholic."

Another substantial pressure comes from the sleepier and more academically-inclined residents within Housing itself. This non-drinking faction may be the great silent minority-the Office of Student Life reported in 1997 that "only" 72% of UO students drink at least once per week.

Despite this, "They say that the biggest reason people leave Housing is because of the noise," the former RA recounted, adding "I think it has something to do with it." For a department not exactly raking in the bucks as of late, anything that could potentially drive away residents-noise violations included-is not likely to be tolerated.

In the last five years, Housing has been steadily losing new and returning students. In 1995, occupancy peaked at a total of 3262, and since 1996 the number of enrolling residents has been declining at an average of 204 less check-ins per year. According to Deanna Miller from Accounts in Resident Services, Housing expects 2911 students enter the dorms this on September 22. This is a bit of an upswing from 1998's low of 2815, though Miller said she expects the number to fluctuate with applications and cancellations as opening day approaches.

A causative link from alcohol use to noise violations to declining annual numbers is not quantifiable, but during the same time period, Housing's policies have nevertheless tightened. In the Fall of1998, after the second year of declining enrollment, Housing revised Policy and Procedures "1. Alcoholic Beverages" to include the line: "Detectable intoxication by residents under the age of 21 within the residence halls is prohibited." (Crack the Whip, OC v. XVI, i. I)

To appease its publics internal and external, Housing has a handful of interconnected institutions designed to mitigate these inevitabilities, which Housing Director Michael Eyster discussed with the Commentator. "A lot of students," he elucidated, "come here with the idea that the U of O is lenient and sort of turns its back on alcohol and other drug policy violations. That's definitely not the case. In the literature that I send out to students and their parents, I tell them, if you're coming here with that notion in mind, it isn't true." This is a sound procedure, but one form letter from the University (out of a great many) cannot alone tackle the problem of underage drinking.

Housing's other preventative measures include, for example, non-alcoholic counter-programming. Examples include dances, basement slumber parties, hall trips to the ice rink, guest lectures, and the like. By giving students something else to do with their time, the hope is that residents will choose to have fun without using alcohol. The effectiveness of these University-sponsored events was called into question by the former Beer Barons and the RA alike. The primary problem, she indicates, is that "the people who go to programming aren't the ones they need to reach out to." Those whom they endeavor to influence, "they make a joke out of it. I think they come to hall functions and then go out and drink." Sometimes they don't even wait long. The inimitable Slutface, for example, was more candid. "I remember once," he smirked, "I came to a hall function just smashed out of my mind. I was fucked up."

Among these countermeasures, the ever-patrolling RAs are the most visible, and perhaps most unpopular-for many residents, the sycophantic hall monitor stereotype from elementary school lingers. Starting with the two-weeklong training period that precedes fall matriculation, new RAs are schooled in the many circumstances they will face throughout the year: managing emergencies, providing emotional support, scheduling meetings, and dealing with conduct code violations-responsibilities not dissimilar to those of your average camp counselor. RAs are instructed to be on the lookout for various signs of alcohol use, including (but not limited to) the sound of clinking bottles and the smell of beer. For the RAs, there were no mixed messages: "They wanted us to be really strict in enforcing the alcohol code." As far as she was concerned, the only time she found it necessary to enforce this policy was when "the residents were really blatant about it... when they're really loud and we've got complaints from other people." Ultimately, discretion was left to the RAs themselves. "Everyone has their own personal guidelines. Itms kind of a gray area."

Another variable is the RA's individual self-reliance in the face of impudent residents. For the Barons, this gray area worked in their favor. "The first thing I'd say, is that our RA was just not really on the ball. I think in any other hall, the RA would realize that there's strange people coming over at all hours," Murdock explained. The former RA, an acquaintance of the Barons' RA, said "she wasn't incapable. I just think her personality was timid, and she wasn't as assertive as other RAs."

Both agreed that beyond the discovery and possible confiscation of the beer, sufficiently proving that any sales had been made (thus violating another policy: "5. Commercial Solicitation, Advertising, Promotion and Transactions") would be very difficult for the RA, or anyone else.

In general, the Barons' attitude toward Housing staff was one of disdain. "The dorms here are a really great place to pursue illegal activities," Murdock proclaimed, "because there aren't any police. The RAs are sophomore and junior students who want to live here for free, so they don't care."

For all the fuss that both Housing and students make about alcohol in the dorms, it appears to many that Housing's reprimands can be easily ignored. These inconsistencies, like those of the RAs, send a mixed message to residents.

While an incident report is supposed to result in either a discussion with the Resident Director, or an appearance before a peer-comprised Area Standards Board-and a fair sanction, this does not always happen. Many students simply neglect to follow through, and believe themselves to be off the hook. This is a belief that Eyster would like to correct: "A student may think that if they don't [fulfill their obligation], then nothing's going to happen. Unfortunately, a lot of students found out this summer that by not following through with their sanctions, they're not going to be able to come back to school this fall... Failure to comply with sanctions takes awhile for Conduct to follow up on, but they follow up on it."

More beguiling is when Housing never follows up on the incident report in any capacity. "The RA is instructed to write down whatever happened, and give that to their Resident Director," Eyster explained. "I don't like this happening, but from time to time, an incident simply doesn't make it through because someone lost paperwork or something like that." Almost three quarters of the students we spoke with in researching this article reported such an experience. "I was written up about eight times, and I never heard anything about any of them," Murdock claimed. "It got to be a routine. For awhile there, it was almost like every other night." Other students had similarly been written up multiple times, with no further difficulty evading justice. On this apparently widespread phenomenon, Eyster conceded, "That's a problem that I've been unaware of until now."

One unavoidable fact is that everyone was once a teenager, almost everyone drank at least on occasion, and most of these ex-criminals (which is what they were) somehow magically transformed into responsible adults after they had been alive for an equally magical 7665 days. Dorm rats, take note: Eyster himself even chuckled and admitted to drinking before his twenty-first birthday-though during his adolescence, the minimum age was still eighteen.

Perhaps a revision of drinking laws should be considered-not doing away with drinking laws entirely, as other countries have found effective, but a reconsideration of age-requirements, taking other similar milestones into consideration: driving, voting, gambling, and enlisting in the armed forces. The indignant protest "I'm old enough to die for my country, but I'm not old enough to drink a beer?," while an oversimplification, holds water. Murdock's opinion is one voiced by minors the nation over: "I don't really feel like I've broken any rules. These are laws that the government has made up, and not everyone agrees with them. You don't have to be twenty-one to drink in Europe."

While this argument is not without merit, don't expect to be signing any petitions for it anytime soon. Its supporters are marginalized, if only by an immovable fact: the opposition is a numerical minority comprised of an apathetic population-adolescents and young adults with little political clout, motivation, or for that matter, time and money to introduce a lobby. The only hope for their cause lies in the sympathy of more influential forces.

Still, the political trend in several Western states would seem to open doors for such a movement. While historically being a moderately conservative body politic, Oregon has recently proven more progressive (in the better sense of the word) than most in approving marijuana and right-to-die measures. Regardless, state liquor laws have yet to loosen along with relevant measures. The issues are essentially identical, viz., It's my body and I'll do what I want with it, but the "ageism" quandary remains insurmountable.

Marijuana smokers have George Soros (and Woody Harrelson, for what it's worth) but underage drinkers have... who? Macaulay Culkin? To say that the situation is not going to budge is an understatement. Societal doctrine continues to hold that citizens under 21 years of age are incapable of making rational decisions about alcohol. As a civil liberty, it just doesn't have much support.

Still, the current state of things, by many residents' accounts, is unacceptable. "Why the hell should they care if I drink or not?" argued one University junior. "I don't want to overuse the word, but I'd have to call it harassment. I know I can take care of myself, but other people's stupidity shouldn't be held against me." One compromise that all sides appeared willing to consider is a "don't-ask, don't-tell" alcohol policy, where only the students unable to drink responsibly would be documented. "If they kept to the policy they have for twenty-one-year-olds right now," the RA offered "where the door is shut and you're just not bugging people, that probably wouldn't be too much of a problem."

Eyster, perhaps to the surprise of the "oppressed" dorm residents, was not unreceptive to this proposal "I'm starting my ninth year here, and there have been very few people that have suggested that to me. And I'm surprised. I frankly would have thought that there would have been a groundswell from somewhere or somebody to do that. It's something that ought to be out in the open and considered." He diplomatically stressed his caution, adding, "I would want to gather a lot more input about it before I came to a conclusion."

For students to overturn state law is a dubious plot at best, but the Residence Halls are another story. Where the Oregon Revised Statutes are aimed at the whole of society, Housing Policy and Procedures are geared to a much narrower demographic. The argument that such a policy (not to mention existing policies) would contradict established procedure outside the University is countered by Eyster himself. "We're not police officers, and we don't do police work," he says. "We don't enforce laws; we enforce policy."

POSTSCRIPT

The Beer Barons' days as modern day bootleggers are over. Still enrolled at the University, the four have moved off-campus, where the pastures, alcoholically speaking, are greener.

Among the four, there is some discussion of continuing the operation, albeit in a necessarily altered form. One proposal is to supply beer to contacts in the residence halls from the safety of their off-campus residence. They acknowledge the added risks and complications of delegating sales to others, and express their concern of putting someone else in the precarious situation they were willing to endure. Another, more quixotic scheme is to sell beer out of their own home. "I wouldn't mind opening a store-type setting," Murdock imagines, "where you actually have a pretty good selection, not just cheap beer and Henry's. That would be great if we could run a microbrew store. Jesus, that would be fun." Talk about continuing the Beer Baron operation is mostly just that: talk. Their days of sitting around the dorms, customers at the door, The Simpsons on the TV, cash piling up in the desk, and navigating a room filled with obnoxious quantities of alcohol, are behind them.

Beer, on the other hand, and the belief in its availability to others like them, is still very much a part of their being. "There is no reason that responsible individuals should not have the right to consume alcoholic beverages," Lando proclaims. "If you don't want to drink beer, then don't drink beer. But if you want to drink beer, you should be able to drink beer. We're college students, for chrissake."

William Beutler, a junior majoring in English and Journalism, is Editor-in-Chief of the Oregon Commentator