Friday, February 16, 2007

Friday Beer Blogging: Drinking Studies Edition

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Those wacky, partying college kids are at it again. And a healthy school rivalry is brewing (get it, brewing) between Southern Illinois University (the real one in Carbondale) and the University of Illinois (the real one in Champaign-Urbana). It involves beer, green beer. The Daily Egyptian has the story. Note I've added the pictures, they were not part of the DE story.
SIUC has a new reason to party. [As if it needed one – Dave]

Because of a Facebook-based student movement, several Carbondale bars -including Pinch Penny Pub, Sidetracks and Gatsby's II - are scheduled to open at 10 a.m. Feb. 23 to celebrate "unofficial" Saint Patrick's Day.


Can I just interject here that more-beer-earlier doesn’t sound like the common definition of a “student movement” but whatever. At least the local bars are there to help in a time of need. Anyway…
The event is a time when students drink beer - filled with green food coloring - throughout the day and attend class drunk because they are on spring break during the actual Saint Patrick's Day on March 17, according to an online posting by group administrator and SIUC student Brad Miller.

The unofficial holiday has been a popular but controversial event at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for years. The Urbana-Champaign Senate - a group of students and faculty - passed a resolution condemning the event in April, according to the campus newspaper, the Daily Illini.

UIUC also recently allowed the expulsion of any student who disrupts class while intoxicated, the newspaper reported.

A Facebook group Miller created last month called for Carbondale to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day early. As of Wednesday evening, the group had 2,295 members.

The group's description recommends students wake up at 7 a.m. and drink green beer all day. It also suggests the students go to class drunk, as was custom at UIUC.

Miller said some UIUC students have expressed anger via Facebook because they feel SIUC is "stealing" their holiday. He said the event has inspired an exchange of insults between students from both schools.

"There's been a huge controversy," he said.
See, a good old fashioned drinking rivalry. Well, U of I kids, maybe you should put up or shut up. How ‘bout a little contest with the Dawgs for the green beer title. The campus with the most students puking green IN CLASS wins.

Oh, and I like this last quote in the DE article.
Katelyn Stapleton, a freshman from Edwardsville studying radio-television, said she plans to skip class for the event. She said she is excited about the new holiday, but doesn't think enough people know about the event to make it a frenzied party or a problem for the university.

"There will be drunk people," she said. "That's all I can say."

Yes, there will be drunk people and that is all anyone can say.

2 comments:

FightforJustice said...

I wonder if Katelyn the freshman is under 21? If so, will be be served in one of the local bars?

Anonymous said...

Lets see a sports rivalry between the schools. The rumor in Carbondale is that the Illini are afraid to play the Dawgs in football or basketball because they would lose. (I believe a glance at the Dawgs records compared to the Illini would prove this out).