As of press time, the Minneapolis City Council’s new “social host ordinance” simply awaits approval from Mayor R.T. Rybak to make it a misdemeanor to host gatherings where underage persons possess or consume alcohol. Whether that threat will actually affect the habits and safety of underage drinkers remains to be seen. One thing is for certain, however. Most students hate the idea.

“It’s not fair to anyone to make it so you are responsible for someone else’s choices,” Shana Conklin, a first-year law student, says. The potential $1,000 fine or 90-day jail sentence for violating the ordinance, she says, is “ridiculous.” “The city’s just trying to raise money because it’s in a budget crisis,” Conklin says.

The Minnesota Student Association, the university’s undergraduate student government, showed its skepticism of the ordinance by voting down a resolution to support it on Jan. 26.

“I think that the City Council is ridiculous in thinking that this ordinance will reduce underage possession and consumption of alcohol,” Kris Schwebler, who spoke against the resolution, says. “It will just increase police’s efforts to punish people for drinking, instead of focusing on more important issues like campus safety.”

Drake Nimz, who led the opposition to the proposed resolution within MSA, agrees. “Many MSA members believe passing the ordinance will actually increase binge drinking,” he says. “Students would still drink, but instead of going out to house parties and being around experienced drinkers who could tell if they’d had too much, they’d drink in smaller groups in the dorms and that could be dangerous.” The ordinance might also scare off partiers from calling for help for someone needing medical attention.

And it will create problems for the many households in which both of-age and underage students live. Because the law charges adults—anyone over 18—for hosting events at which underage individuals—anyone under 21—can consume alcohol, it punishes those aged 18 to 20 in whose homes alcohol is consumed. “So if someone who’s 21 has his buddies over to drink, his underage roommate would have to leave,” Nimz says.

There are reasons, of course, for the ordinance to have been proposed and passed by the City Council. The rejected MSA resolution to support it, introduced by Paul Buchel, cites a rise in alcohol-related crimes and neighborhood association complaints in recent years as motivation to increase efforts to combat underage drinking. Ward 2 Council Member Cam Gordon, who represents the University of Minnesota area in Minneapolis and who proposed the ordinance, cited similar concerns when he first introduced the idea.

While recognizing the problems caused by student drinking, the MSA anti-ordinance contingent believes that there are other options for dealing with them. Nimz says the new law is overkill: citations for noise violation and minor consumption should accomplish most of the same goals. Schwebler wants better education for students on the dangers of drinking.

The ordinance, which was passed with a unanimous vote of 12-0, will take effect later this month, once it is signed by Mayor R.T. Rybak. It is designed only to punish the hosts of parties that knowingly serve alcohol to underage teens.

Art history senior Austin Hinkle thinks the ordinance is right to hold hosts partly responsible for problems with underage drinkers. “The people that host parties obviously know if people are drinking underage, and if the party gets busted then the host should get in trouble for not kicking them out before it got busted,” he says.

Despite that belief, Hinkle still says he won’t be deterred from hosting parties by the new ordinance. Neither will recent graduate Cody Zwiefelhofer, though he does say he would be more concerned about the noise level of a party. Of the ordinance, he says, “It’s a good way to try and scare young kids into not throwing parties, but that doesn’t make it any less silly.”

Tags: Minneapolis, UMPD