The Insiders
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Apr
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Fridays
Posted by: Neal Yonson | April 1, 2007 | 18 Comments
As I gaze longingly back at years of yore, reflecting on my precious half-decade involved at UBC, I can’t help but notice the absolute depths to which campus community have plummeted. Seriously. Where are all the beer gardens?
I used to love beer gardens. Not because I’d get smashed, but because it was where the community happened. A bzzr garden wasn’t about beer, it was about the roving community of people who’d hang out on Fridays, travelling the campus. I can say that, without hesitation, but for beer gardens I’d never have been elected to BoG. In all honesty, involvement in that social circle was that tiny bit of a foot in the door that got me involved in the orbit of campus politics.
I can’t help but feel that those days are behind us. And I, for one, find that sad. Even more sad are the explanations I’ve come up with. (And yes, I do spend time worrying about this. For reals.)
- Admissions averages. Students have higher marks coming out of high school, and are expecting to keep them. Fridays are less beer-y, more study-y.
- Higher tuition, more loan dependency. Students are more likely to be working on Fridays or studying (because they were working on Thursday) or sleeping because they’re exhausted.
- Pressure to get second degree. The first degree is becoming rapidly obsolete. Students feel the need to get into grad/law/med school, and that means higher marks.
- Police crack-down. Seriously. What gives? The cops showed up to every beer garden on campus in the first semester, creating a “chill” around future events. They’re denying licenses and killing on-campus booze-based socializing.
- The “millennial” generation. Bzzr gardens are a starting off point for entrepreneurial fun. You really have to make your own, bzzr gardens were just a way to meet up and get started. The millennial generation are kids who like rules, need a little hand-holding, and are far more likely to go to a more formal party environment or structured social activity.
- Specialization of fun. Less affinity and sense of community to the institution as a whole, more with narrow friends. Probably a function of the combination of things above.
I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.
And the worst part? Grad, law, and med schools don’t need more keener kids, they need well-rounded people with *gasp* social skills. And here’s a tip – in the real world, people drink booze. Sometimes a lot. And college is probably as good a time as any to learn how to drink socially. It’s way better than getting blasted on tequila in res.
I miss beer gardens.
(Yes, I’m aware of the irony of my posting this at 11pm on a Saturday. I’m in the middle of a paper. Bite me.)
Comments
18 Comments so far
As SUS Social Coordinator last year, I was no stranger to this ongoing trend, but that which I have the most experience with here is the police.
The sudden police crack down is because of a change in their administration. What I find particularly odd is the minutiae they shut down events for. Case in point, a recent event run by Chemical Engineering was shut down, and during my ease-drop I heard one reason was because someone had passed out on a couch (they were hauled off to the drunk tank). Now, here is someone that’s clearly either pre-drank, or over drank at the event. Admittedly, the servers do have the responsibility to prevent the fine gent from over drinking, but if he wasn’t going to do it there he would be doing it in an environment that is probably not as well lit and overcrowded. Gardens, not matter how crappily run, are well safer than
Killing events wont kill alcohol, it will simply move it to places decentralized, and shift the job of breaking the law to the many instead of the single organizations.
It should also be noted their attendance is irregular. They showed up to Cold Fusion (~500 people, hard alcohol) once, but to some engineering events (less than 200 people, no hard alcohol) 3+ times in the night.
I even had one time a police officer remind me of my legal responsibilities at an event I was running because he couldn’t find anything to bust me on. I simply told him to leave if they were not taking an action because I had a legal responsibility to be watching the bar.
Anecdotes aside, the cops have been setting a tone with us SoCo’s, and it’s a tone of militancy.
Er, to complete a sentence above…
Gardens, no matter how crappily run, are well safer than a residence, wreck beach, or street side.
Just to add one that you missed (at least in my opinion):
-The U-Pass. Allowing rez kids an easier trip off campus has amplified some of the “commuter campus”/lack of community symptons UBC suffers from. The problem here is clearly not with the U-Pass, but does help make a good argument for more student housing.
This point was also interesting to me: “Specialization of fun. Less affinity and sense of community to the institution as a whole, more with narrow friends. Probably a function of the combination of things above.”
Keep up the good work, I enjoy reading people’s comments on here.
Jeff Friedrich
AMS President
Jeff, think a spot on the AMS mainpage could be set up where people could easily click the latest headline off UBC Insiders? The technology exists out there…
Jeff, good call on the U-Pass. Hadn’t thought of that.
The higher admissions argument only goes so far, as the higher admissions average corelates with high exit averages.
If anything there are more seats in BC for post-secondary, and thus more students should be getting in.
The higher averages is function of universities inflating themselves and compassionate high school teachers reacting in turn.
no?
In any case, you are right, and the break down of campus fun/activities/communities is rampant.
I know you (tim) used to spend somewhere near as much time in the gallery as I did say, five years ago, and compared to the average sales/noise level/head count on any given afternoon it is quite clear to see that students are scurrying off to the library/home/res/???.
As for the “militant” cops, fallow liquor law. Its not all that hard. If it is a grey area, be on the good side of it, because the seemly accepted idea from most of the so-co’s that I know is “they should just give us a break” but thats naive and juvenile.
If any bar around town said “oh, yeah, well we just had 5 or 6 under-agers around” or “yeah, don’t mind those two unconscious people over there, we didn’t over serve them, we are looking out for them” (maybe the blarney stone will start that policy?), or maybe even “he’s not over served, he always acts like that”…
What do you think would happen?
It rhythms with a seven thousand dollar fine, and the potential of having your establishment closed for a period of days.
However,
If I had a solution it would be for faculties and undergrad. associations to star directly connecting with their memberships.
And maybe that means the prof saying at 4pm on a Friday “class is over, I am headed down to the Lada/Mass/cheese, for some snacks/drinks/etc, you should all come”, and likewise so would anyone from that undergrad. assoc.
Instead, we don’t talk to people in our classes, save the few people who always sit in the same seats where we always sit, before we scurry off as soon as the bell rings.
/rant
Spencer, I’m not sure if you’re serious about linking UBCi to the AMS mainpage, but if you are, it sounds like a crap-tastic idea to me.
I’m a rookie to this blog, and I haven’t conferred with Tim and Gina on this, but I think the point here is that we talk about what we want, unendoresed by anyone and unbeholden to anyone. The fact that Gina and Tim are quite involved in AMS doesn’t mean this place “belongs” to the AMS. From my understanding, it is their intention to develope UBCi’s readership and contributors such that it can continue once they personally move on from UBC.
If Jeff wants to have a “UBC media” page on the AMS website and include the undergrad papers, student politician blogs (like Alfie Lee’s and Alex Lougheed’s) and sites like us (since VFM will prbably spawn more), that would be a different story. It would be a great way to integrate thier PR policy with a growing media culture on campus.
But this specific blog isn’t the AMS’s personal editorial board.
How about the AMS bring back the campus events committee to look at this problem?
There is growing demand for good events, and centralized event information on campus. Look at the creation of After 8 Events. A slew of first year, having seen the lack of good parties on campus, created their own organization dedicated to filling the gap and they have had a lot of success so far. What’s sad though is that After 8 has started doing more and more events off-campus, because there simply isn’t access to good venues on campus. We can no longer book McInnis field (see OktoberfEUSt 2006 ordeal), the SUB ballroom only fits 500, and there are no other centralized locations that are easy to access. I know the AMS VP Admin this year has a strong will to increase campus awareness of events, (for instance, SAC calendar), but perhaps we should be aiming bigger than something in the SUB nook?
Also, to Ryan, the constituencies do need to start following licensing rules more strictly. However, the campus RCMP have begun enforcing rules that are not in the law books. These rules include:
– 4.5 Standard Drinks/person Maximum licencing
– License caps
– Suspension of _departmental_ licensing privileges for 3 months if an infraction is found.
Further to that, for some reason Classroom services sets capacity for many venues on campus. They set the Ladha Centre’s capacity for the main floor and mezzanine to 100 people. SUS is in dialogues with our dean to cut classroom services out of the process (Ladha is not a classroom) and to get capacity set to fire code.
I’ll send off some emails to the appropriate people now, to try to bring back campus events committee.
Maayan, if there was any logical connection between posting an RSS feed for this blog and owning it, I would agree with you. But there isn’t.
And yes, I would agree that other media should also be linked to but it shouldn’t be all available media, if only because a lot of it isn’t very good. I personally don’t care if it it was a news ticker that cycled through recent UBC Insiders or Ubyssey posts. But right now there is no links to any form of student media from the AMS website at all.
And Alex, don’t bring back the Campus Events Committee if it is for an ad-hoc purpose. It was axed because it never met and had no clear reason to meet. This sounds more like an issue that can be addressed by a roundtable rather than a committee.
Hell, bring all the social coordinators on campus to do an open-space conference on campus life.
Fair enough spencer – I could just hear the screams of “incest!” ringing in my ears if this specific blog only was featured prominantly on the AMS mainpage. A cycle throgh Ubyssey articles and other media deemed worthy by the powers that be would be cool. Student media culture is something that has humungus potential (not to sound like a broken record or anything – but we all love self-reflexive topics).
I just sent out an email to various social coordinators trying to begin a dialogue. We’ll see what comes to fruition.
And spencer, the campus events committee was never axed, it still exists, just never meets. Hopefully after some wide dialogue things can be standardized.
Sorry, wishful thinking I guess on my part. That does not really change the fact that it is a generally useless committee that *should* be axed.
an ams-hosted rss feed would be great, if it had a bunch of blogs on it. and by ‘a bunch of blogs’ i mean ‘my blog’ [/whoring]
It’s way better than getting blasted on tequila in res.
damn, i miss res.
While my colleague thinks beer gardens are an integral part of campus life, I would argue that the undergrad beer gardens put on are only self-serving. I do, however, agree with him when he refers to other beer gardens like the Canadian Club/UCS/Polish club ones, etc.
If any bar around town said “oh, yeah, well we just had 5 or 6 under-agers around” or “yeah, don’t mind those two unconscious people over there, we didn’t over serve them, we are looking out for them” (maybe the blarney stone will start that policy?), or maybe even “he’s not over served, he always acts like that”…
What do you think would happen?
It rhythms with a seven thousand dollar fine, and the potential of having your establishment closed for a period of days.
Umm… No no no no no no no.
At one bar I worked at, we joked that we were “overserving it right” and routinely had a group of guys on the patio on thursdays drinking to the point where a majority of htem had to be assisted in leaving.
In my time at the Blarney Stone, I cleaned up puke more times than can count. In any given weekend night, we’d probably have between 3 and 5 people flat out PASS OUT.
For gods sakes, we had a bouncer break a mans jaw, intentionally, and no repercussions.
Beer gardens on campus are being held to a level that no bar I have ever had the privilege of working for has been held to in any way shape or form.
Wow… I need a beer after just making it to the bottom of all these comments.
Another minor reason for this trend could be the end of Grade 13 in Ontario… they at least made up a core chunk of first years who were lucky enough to be over 19 when they got here.
Which segues nicely into my next point, that a drinking age of 19 is stupid.
But since that’s unlikely to change anytime soon, here are my thoughts on the UBC situation…
Is this just a symptom of a general loss of campus engagement? In 2nd term of 2nd year (damn you, December birthday) I had beer and nachos for dinner pretty much every Friday. I went to lots of beer gardens, but was way more likely to attend parties hosted by groups that I was either involved with (SUS) or at least somewhat interested in (UCS). I was much less interested in the bigger, flashier parties hosted by groups I didn’t care about (Ski&Board, Canadian Club).
There also seems to be a growing number of students who don’t drink (then again, maybe I just know more of them since I don’t hang out at beer gardens anymore) and who therefore avoid alcoholic events entirely.
Also alarming to me is the fact that the new Dean of Science is apparently very anti-booze and doesn’t seem to want “Science” and “party” to appear on the same poster (although this is just hearsay). We seem to have a dry dean on our hands.
I don’t think this is something that the AMS can fix (“whereas Fridays are boring, BIRT AMS Council direct its constituents to hold bzzr gardens every Friday. Note: Requires 2/3”) given that its own drinking establishments and AMS Events initiatives are suffering.
I also propose that beer gardens could be a social come and go thing.
As the landscape of students and their interests might be fluctuating in any given graduation/entrance cycle, I don’t think it’s necesserily a permanent change in the water that the beer garden scene is fading.
Maybe the new flock of people next year with replenish some of the social vigor we’ve seen in the past, maybe not.
(I suppose I don’t have any emotional attachment to this because I’m not a fan of beer.)