Olaf is responsible for drunk driving
Northfield News ran a particularly sanctimonious article recently on drunk driving. This seems to reflect a common attitude toward drunk driving: it’s the responsibility of the sinful lush — and if we arrest more of them, the problem will be solved.
I don’t think, however, most people driving drunk are really people who particularly want to. They’re people who want to be drunk. And want to get home. Drunk driving should absolutely be illegal, but the fact that we punish it (and socially shame it) while providing no viable alternative is seriously problematic.
In Copenhagen, it didn’t seem to be much of an issue. The only cars one saw on the streets on Friday or Saturday night were taxis. Otherwise, buses ran every 10-20 minutes, and many people (myself included) generally just biked home after having a drink. The infrastructure facilitated safe drunk transit, with relative density and plenty of safe bike routes (like Nørrebroparken, in the pic above).
We can’t snap our fingers and transform into that here in Minnesota, but at least in Northfield, we could do something about drunk driving. Here’s my thinking:
- (Getting to the title of this post) St. Olaf formally disallows drinking on campus, even by students of legal age. While this rule is not generally followed, Olaf should provide a structure for it to be complied with.
- I estimate about 30-40% of Olaf students are of legal age to drink (at a minimum, all seniors are). To comply with 1., the only good options for those students would be to drink at Carleton or in the bars downtown.
- While St. Olaf is a physically walkable/bikeable distance from downtown, most students use motorized transit to get between downtown and campus, especially in the winter.
- Because of 1-3, students do drive drunk between the bars downtown and campus. Because of the the placement of student parking, they also must wind through the heavily pedestrian-used streets on The Hill to get to student parking.
- Therefore St. Olaf bears a certain responsibility to ensure students will not drive drunk. When somebody does inevitably die or is injured at the hands of student driving drunk, it will be something the college probably could have prevented.
The best way to do this is to provide a better option: quite simply, a drunk bus. St. Olaf already waste effort on “safe ride” (bringing mostly people who think it’s cold outside to the other side of campus when they say they feel “unsafe”). Why not, instead, simply have a mini-bus (like the ones already used by the Northfield Metro Express, or like the 11A bus below) running circles between the campus and downtown Northfield? It’s a short enough distance that one bus could literally run every 10-15 minutes. This would encourage compliance with Olaf’s policies and make the roads, on- and off-campus, safer for all.
And a note to students, until such a time happens that Olaf gets its act together:
- The legal limit of alcohol for persons under 21 is zero.
- Drunk bicycling does not qualify as a DUI in Minnesota. Bikes are not a good universal solution for this problem, but, for the time-being, get on two wheels instead of four.
