Spiking girls champagne drinks in bar.

Auburn University in 2015 had a scandal when one of its professors was manufacturing and distributing GBH, a date rape drug. It immediately issued an alert to its students warning them of the dangers.

Auburn’s policy on a “Drug Free Campus” also addresses GHB.

The University of Alabama’s “Drug Free Campus and Workplace Policy” has no mention of “date rape drugs.”

Perhaps, with the publicity about Megan Rondini and the possible use of GHB, the University of Alabama should include “date rape drugs” among the substances it has included in its policy? For that matter the use of “date rape drugs” is a national phenomena on college campuses. Tuscaloosa should catch up to “The Loveliest Village On The Plains” by making University students aware of GHB and other such drugs.

The code of ordinances for Tuscaloosa, Alabama §3-23(c) stipulates that:

Any person seeking a restaurant liquor license shall submit with its application the plans of its restaurant which shall include the following:

(1) The kitchen shall have a food preparation area and storage equipment necessary to prepare the items listed on the menu.

(2) The number of persons that may be served at one sitting must be listed and there should be space in said area for at least 15 square feet per person.

(3) A proposed menu shall be submitted. The following items will not be considered a meal if they are the only ones served by the establishment seeking a restaurant liquor license: Oysters, shrimp, crab claws, chips, pickles, meats and eggs, peanuts, pretzels, popcorn, sandwiches or any other food that the revenue officer considers not to fall within the definition of a meal as set out in Code of Ala. 1975, § 28-3-1(23).

Jason Morton reported in the Tuscaloosa News:

Tuscaloosa city officials unanimously approved a series of legal definitions that will formally define restaurants, bars and businesses that fluctuate between both.

The definitions also place restrictions on certain uses, such as bars or taverns, event spaces (such as banquet halls) and live entertainment venues.

Another part of the discussion is the addition of buffers around Queen City Avenue and the city’s historic districts to prevent night-oriented businesses from disturbing those who live in these areas.

These buffers have drawn strong opinions from those who stand to be affected.

Developer Phillip Weaver, who has renovated and upgraded a number of downtown structures, was not present for Tuesday’s vote, but this summer he questioned how far the city was willing to go to limit the use of certain buildings.

Weaver now owns the former AlaGasCo building located less than a block from Queen City Avenue on University Boulevard, which could stand to be affected by the new buffer rules.

He has said there was no plan to put a bar or business that stayed open until the early morning hours in there, but he may want a restaurant that converts to a bar and offers live music at about 10 p.m.

It might seem obvious to many people that any establishment that derives most of its revenue from alcohol sales should be considered to be a bar. A bar could also serve food if it so desires.

It would appear to some observers that some of the owners of businesses that serve alcohol want their establishments to be classified as restaurants in order to allow patrons to enter the premises who are too young to be served alcohol.

Would it be unreasonable to require that a restaurant be defined in terms of its being able to earn most of its revenue from food sales?

Maybe the “Duck Test” should be applied to establishments that sell booze?

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

Binge drinking has gone down for adolescents in the United States, which may be a consequence of successful national and state-level policies and programs on under-aged drinking. But in the alcohol drenched atmosphere of college life, binge drinking has sometimes become an even greater problem.

Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, wrote:

But what about when they go to college and suddenly enter an environment where sex and alcohol are rampant? For example, although fewer 18-year-olds now binge-drink, 21- to 22-year-olds still binge-drink at roughly the same rate as they have since the 1980s. One study found that teens who rapidly increased their binge-drinking were more at risk of alcohol dependence.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism‘s College Drinking Fact Sheet states:

About 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle crashes.  About 696,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. About 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report experiencing alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.

The City of Tuscaloosa, where the University of Alabama is located, may be just waiting for a lawsuit to happen because of its failure to enforce its own codes on under-aged drinking.

According to Alabama State Code Title 28 : 

It shall be unlawful: (a) For any person to sell, furnish, give to or purchase for any minor, alcoholic beverages; or to attempt to sell, furnish, give to or purchase for any minor, any alcoholic beverages.

Tuscaloosa’s City Code (Sec. 3-42. -Certain licensees not to admit under-aged persons) clearly states:

It shall be unlawful for a lounge liquor licensee, or manager, or other person in charge of the licensed establishment either directly, or by its servant, agent or employee, to admit or allow any person to be in, on, or upon said licensed premises in violation of any state law regulating the age of persons allowed on such premises.  

Could it be that the City of Tuscaloosa is taking the route of the Pinto auto-makers who knew that they were selling a defective product?  A simplified version would be that the automakers weighed the relative costs of litigation and correcting automobile design errors and decided that potential law suits were worth the risk.

Popular Mechanics’ “The Top Automotive Engineering Failures: The Ford Pinto Fuel Tanks” described industry thinking in this way:

Ford did a cost-benefit analysis. To fix the problems would cost an additional $11 per vehicle, and Ford weighed that $11 against the projected injury claims for severe burns, repair-costs claim rate and mortality. The total would have been approximately $113 million (including the engineering, the production delays and the parts for tens of thousands of cars), but damage payouts would cost only about $49 million, according to Ford’s math. So the fix was nixed, and the Pinto went into production in September 1970.

Or, the City of Tuscaloosa might find itself on the horns of a dilemma. There is a loophole in the law that allows most University students ( who are minors ) to be allowed into bars. Tuscaloosa’s downtown area has thriving businesses that serve alcohol and students feel as if they should be part of Tuscaloosa’s entertainment scene. It is impractical to expect the alcohol vendors to enforce liquor laws.

Alcohol Policy MD has described the problem in this way:

In many states throughout the country, minors – those under the legal drinking age of 21 – are permitted in bars unaccompanied by an adult. State and local regulations vary widely in the extent to which they permit minors to enter on-sale retail alcohol outlets

One thing is clear: allowing minors into drinking establishments such as bars and nightclubs is, in the words of one enforcement official, “a regulator’s nightmare.” (Inspector General 1991). It creates numerous difficulties for servers, who must conduct repeated identification checks and continuously track who is actually drinking the beverages being served. It allows minors to consume alcohol purchased from older individuals. And it encourages minors to drink as a way to socialize and become one with their peers.

Underage college drinkers are more likely than their of-age counterparts to suffer consequences ranging from unplanned sex, getting hurt or injured, requiring medical treatment for an alcohol overdose, and doing something they would later regret.  (Wechsler et al. 2000)  These problems often have impacts not just on the drinkers, but on fellow students and area residents as well.

The University of Alabama is aware of the problems associated with under-aged drinking, yet seems incapable of curbing it.

In Alabama, as the University’s student alcohol policy states, “Individuals under 21 years of age are not permitted to consume alcohol.”

The University acknowledges that:

According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism college students face dire consequences due to high alcohol consumption. These estimates include:1,825 traditional aged college students  (between the ages of 18 and 24) die each year due to alcohol-related injuries; 696,000 are assaulted by a peer who has been drinking; 97,000 students are victims of an alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape; 400,000 students had unprotected sex, and more than 100,000 students report to being too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex, and more than 150,000 develop an alcohol-related health problem. (2009).

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has described what a “perfect storm” in terms of campus alcohol abuse would be:

Whatever mitigating parental influence on alcohol use that could exist is largely not a factor in Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama, where there is a preponderance of out-of-state students living away from their families.

In a city where even its local Chamber of Commerce’s business journal is named Rising Tide ( as in the University of Alabama’s “Crimson Tide” moniker ), what its students who reside here do is a very important issue. Can students have a safe and healthy educational experience under the current conditions in T-Town?

Accusations of rape were recently reported in a story “Rape Accusations Against Italian Police Dismay Florence” in the New York Times by Jason Horowitz:

As a group of American students studying abroad followed their professor on a field trip through an exquisite Renaissance palazzo, an Italian television reporter around the corner offered viewers a different kind of tour.

In the apartment building where two of the students’ classmates lived, he dramatically pointed to the elevator and staircase where, the two students say, two uniformed members of the country’s iconic Carabinieri police force raped them in the predawn hours of Sept. 7.

The officers have been suspended; they admitted to prosecutors that they had sex with the young women, aged 21 and 19, after meeting them while on duty and in uniform at a popular nightclub and giving them a lift home in their squad car.

The students, whose names have not been released, told prosecutors they were drunk and were raped. But the officers said that the women were not intoxicated, and that the sex was consensual.

The episode has especially touched nerves in a city where American students make up a tenth of the entire student population and help fuel the economy, but also can be seen, and heard, drinking on the streets. Many native Florentines are moving out of the city, and those who remain are increasingly bothered by the proliferation of people who are speaking English in Florence and disgusted by the drunken behavior on their streets.

On American campuses, debates over what does and does not constitute consent and sexual assault, particularly when large quantities of alcohol are at play, have become pervasive and politically charged. Those delicate discussions, though, have largely not made it over to Italy.

Here in Florence the accusations have instead generated cringeworthy media coverage and conversations about American students behaving badly, with Italian television news programs accompanying reports with supplemental footage of anonymous women walking in short leather skirts.

And the thorny issues of victimhood, and where bad judgment ends and malice begins, have been eclipsed by the national disgust over the involvement of members of the Carabinieri, a police force that operates under the control of the Defense Ministry and is celebrated with collectible calendars and television dramas.

The mayor is desperate to avoid the sensationalism that inundated Perugia a decade ago during the long trial of Amanda Knox, an American college student accused, and ultimately exonerated, of murder. He said he had urged the Carabinieri commander to hire more women and instructed city lawyers to file a civil suit against the officers, whom he called ‘disgusting,’ primarily to ensure that the case moves as quickly as possible through the byzantine Italian judicial system.

The provincial commander of the Carabinieri, Giuseppe De Liso, said in an interview that when he heard the news, he called the American consul right away. Disciplinary action was immediately taken against the two officers, he said, which could eventually result in their expulsion, an outcome the Italian Defense Minister, Roberta Pinotti, who oversees the Carabinieri, has all but said is a certainty.

In his headquarters, a former convent, decorated with antique illustrations of Carabinieri uniforms throughout the centuries, Mr. De Liso said he needed to eradicate any suspicion of a cover-up and to restore the honor of his beloved police force.

Florence ( Firenze) has always seemed to be overrun with foreign students. They have a reputation for binge drinking and even been known to jump into historical fountains.

The University of Alabama has a strict policy for its students studying abroad: one strike and you are homeward bound on a jetliner. Other schools have whole compounds for their students who are living in Florence but the University’s junkets are limited to short term visits.

Tuscaloosa’s downtown has a long way to go before it becomes a “Bourbon Street North.” But the Tuscaloosa City Council recently approved a new weekend entertainment district in downtown Tuscaloosa. The “Downtown T-Town Fall Entertainment District”,  as reported in The Tuscaloosa News “allows participating alcohol retailers located within — or immediately adjacent to — the boundary to serve to-go alcoholic beverages in a designated cup.”

By Thursday afternoons on “gameday” weekends, the restaurants and bars in downtown Tuscaloosa are full of patrons. Many of them are students who are too young to legally be served alcohol. University of Alabama students are in fact walking in the downtown area after dark on just about every day of the week. There are no movie theaters or open retail stores at night in Tuscaloosa’s downtown. Restaurants and bars that serve alcohol are the destinations for most students.

To accommodate patrons of  the downtown area who need a ride home small carts that patrol the downtown have proliferated. There are also shuttle buses. There is even a downtown Police Precinct that is essentially dedicated to students, with a holding cell for inebriated offenders.

Megan Rondini, the University student who committed suicide over what she believed to be a sexual assault that was covered up, had intended to walk back to her residence after midnight. It would have been a thirty minute walk on dimly lit streets from the Innisfree Irish Pub where she had been a customer. She was offered a ride home that changed her life.

According to a Facebook post by Donald V Watkins: Bobby Moore, an investigator for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, has asked to interview witnesses in the Megan Rondini case. Megan is the young University of Alabama honors student who was drugged and raped during the early morning hours of July 2, 2015, by Terry Jackson ‘Sweet T’ Bunn, Jr. Sweet T has denied raping Megan. Two of the individuals contacted by Moore are friends of Megan who were with her at Innisfree Irish Pub on the night of July 1, 2015.

Watkins posted:  Bobby Moore’s requests for witness interviews came on Friday, September 8, 2017 — exactly one day after Ms. Alice Martin, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama (2001-2009) and former chief deputy attorney general for Alabama (2015-2017) published an article titled, “Alabama Voices: The scars left by date rape drugs” in the Montgomery Advertiser. The article describes Ms. Martin’s own scary experience with “date rape” drugs.