Dry dorms aren’t fly;
wetter would be better
KASEY KERBER is a senior
news-editorial major and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
I am not a drunk.
But I do enjoy a drink every once in a
while.
I am not poor.
But you bet your buttocks I clip coupons.
What do the two of these seemingly point
less deep confessions have in common?
Simple. I can’t drink in my dorm room.
Therefore I must hit the bars and waste my
whopping $ 15 Daily Nebraskan columnist
paycheck every time one of my friends turns
21.
I know what you’re saying: “Cry me a
river, Kerber. So you can’t drink a Corona in
your room with a big-ass slice of lime you cut
too large to stick through the neck of the bot
tle. Why should I care?”
And to a certain extent, you’re right. 1
Maybe you shouldn’t care.
But for those of us who have survived
three years of cafeteria casseroles, we do care.
We’ve ridden elevators seemingly run by
gerbils. We’ve watched our rates go up every
single year. We’ve seen our parking permits
become hunting permits.
And you know what we deserve?
(No, not another “Baywatch” marathoa)
We deserve a beer.
But unfortunately, we live on a campus
that has a drier image than the scalp of a dan
druff sufferer.
Yet it’s just that. An image. A facade.
There are dorm residents out there that get
so plastered that they hand the officer their
credit card instead of their ID.
And there are dorm residents drinking
Jack Daniels straight from their rented
It’s a matter of rights.
The way I see it, when you turn 21, you
earn the right to drink.
And, while I understand it’s the universi
ty’s right to look out for the safety and com
munity of residence hall students, I also feel
I’ve been stripped buck-naked of my rights.
I don’t believe any serious consideration
has ever been given to the responsibility of
upper-class students. Instead, all I ever hear
are horror stories committed by a dozen idiots
that conceivably wouldn’t know the difference
between responsibility and buttered bread.
In my book, without giving consideration
to responsible 21-year-olds, administration is
being far more irresponsible.
So, you might ask, is there a solution?
Probably not.
For as hard as I might try, stubborn minds
will remain in the positions where policy gets
a green light.
out that aoesn t mean l won t oner a solu
tion to get conversation, and minds, moving.
First, create a special “community” floor
for 21 -year-old drinkers - similar to die
“healthy lifestyle” or “community service
floors” that were created last year.
Employ responsible, specially trained SAs
and have an open-door policy, where drinkers
have to leave their door open while consum
ing. This will make it much harder for those
who aren’t 21 to have drinks without getting
caught.
And institute a limit on the amount of
alcohol a student can have in his or her room
(maybe a 12-pack of beer).
But quit telling me that dry is fly. Because
I’m no longer buying it.
After four years of being dedicated to resi
dence hall living, I’m growing tired of shrink
ing benefits and rules that never change.
Yes, I’m tired of hearing about the “dan
gers,” all the while never receiving a single
ounce of consideration for being responsible.
And I’m not alone.
There are plenty of bot
tles in the dorm trash
chutes to
attest to
that.
Micromage.
There are also dorm resi- j
dents driving to off cam- ,— |
pus parties where they / \
actually can drink - / ./]
only to drive home so / IA
intoxicated that you /
could light their \ sjkff
breath on fire. j
As Pound Hall ^
president, I’d like to f
think that most dorm // , y
residents are respon- | * . V
sible - especiaUy the I .
upper-class ones of U.
drinking age. / jr .
But not always. (
And it’s not like 7 ^
housing gives us /\| ^
many options. ' { K sXfr,
Let’s face it-if {1 **
students were able vl 'i
to drink legally in c/A ™
their room, they ( \^. i
might never have [ l js. \
to get behind a ~..
wheel or be X f
tempted to do so.
<'> Sure, you
might catch a
glimpse of them
“missing” the :
entrance to their dorm
room a few times after
a return-trip from the
bathroom, but
beyond a few slight
bruises, no real
damage would be '/
done.
In addition,
cheap students like
me would be able to
avoid the Friday night |
madness of downtown,
where I’m pretty sure die A
odds of getting a beer botde
broken over my head are
higher.
Still, this isn’t just a matter of
safety or economics.
yVVV* 0?'
Matt Haney/DN
;
Drunken drivers beware; repercussions ahead
TIM SULLIVAN is a third-year law
student and a Daily Nebraskan
columnist.
If you drink and drive, listen to this: I don’t want
to see your face.
Perhaps you remember Laura Cockson. She was
a pfe-occupational therapy major and a member of
the Gamma Phi Beta sorority at UNL last spring.
She was killed by Jeffrey Ireland, a drunken driver
who sped through a red light after a police officer
attempted to pull him over because his car had no
license plates.
Pretty stupid on his part, wouldn’t you say? He’ll
find out just how stupid when he’s sentenced-this
afternoon. But Ireland is not die only drunken fool
out there.
There are others. Lots of them.
When asked if he had any disabilities that would
interfere with his performance in a field sobriety test,
one suspected drunken driver told the officer the
only thing that might interfere with his performance
was the fact that he was drunk.
Another inebriated motorist told the officer he
couldn’t do the field sobriety test because he was
paralyzed.
One drunken driver left the scene of a personal
injury accident He left a blood trail to his home,
however, and officers discovered the naked man hid
ing in his basement.
How do I know these things, you ask?
I work as a law clerk for the Nebraska
Department of Motor Vehicles. My function there is
to process appeals from administrative license revo
cations for driving under the influence of alcohol.
I’ve been at the job for about a year now. I see an
average of 30 or 40 appeals to the District Courts
every month.
Here’s the way it works.
When you’re stopped by the police and
they have probable cause to believe that you
are operating a motor vehicle under the
influence of alcohol or drugs, they
can request that you submit to a
&>' field sobriety test
and/or a pre
x5>w) liminary
~ ' ' > /\ breath test.
Normally,
*\\\
jy
P if you fail
| the field sobri
ety test, they ask
you to submit to a
—» . $ preliminary breath
test. *
They use a small, hand-held device called an
Alco-Sensor to do the preliminary breath test If you
fail that, then they place you under arrest and take
you somewhere to take an lntoxilyzer test.
You blow into the lntoxilyzer, and if you’re over
. 10, you’re cited for driving under the influence.
They also confiscate your driver’s license, right
then and there.
The officer then fills out a form that serves to
notify you that, unless you ask for an administrative
hearing within 10 days, your license will automati
cally be revoked in 30 days. The officer gives you a
copy of the Sworn Report, which serves as your tem
porary license during that 30 days. They also give
you a Petition for Administrative Hearing, and an
envelope in which to mail the completed Petition to
the Department of Motor Vehicles.
You have 10 days in which to file the petition
requesting an administrative license revocation hear
ing. If you don’t request the administrative hearing,
then your license is suspended for either 90 days or
one year, depending on whether you refused the test
or had a previous administrative license revocation.
Then you appear at the hearing, normally with an
attorney. The only issues at the hearing are whether
or not the officer had probable cause to believe you
were driving under fhe influence of alcohol, and
whether you can show by a preponderance of the
evidence that the recitations contained in the sworn
report of the officer are false.
In other words, was there probable cause and is
the report true?
If the answers to those questions are yes, then
your driver’s license is revoked for 90 days, assuming
it’s your first administrative license revocation.
An order revoking your license is tnen sent to
you by certified mail.
You have 30 days to file a Petition for Review of
Agency Decision in the District Court of the county
in which the arrest occurred.
That’s when / see the faces of these people.
When I get their appeals, I pull their f les, and I find
their driver’s licenses stapled inside them.
I get a good look at the faces of these people.
On the criminal side, a conviction means a
mandatory seven days jail, $400 fme and a six
month license suspension.
If driving under the influence is the proximate
cause of serious bodily injury, then it becomes a
Class IE felony, punishable by 20 years in prison, a
$25,000 fme or both. The mandatory minimum is
one year.
That’s serious time.
In talking to some of the 20 or so lawyers
employed by the DMV and from reading the tran
scripts of some of the hearings that get appealed to
the District Courts, I’ve heard a lot of humorous sto
ries about drunken drivers.
For example, one frequently heard reason for
stopping someone is that the officer sees vomit run
ning down the driver’s-side door.
One attorney told me about a guy who had only
one hand, but was made to do the “finger-to-nose”
field sobriety test by the officer nonetheless.
Sometimes, the drunken driver sticks his or her
head out the car window and asks an officer for
assistance with something, like finding the ignition.
Along with the humorous stories. I've heard
some horrid ones.
A Columbus woman ran mto a train while dri
ving under the influence of alcohol.
One young man crashed into the back of a bus in
the middle of the day. And that’s got to be an embar
rassing story to tell.
In. 1998, the Nebraska Department of Motor
Vehicles Legal Division conducted 3.748 hearings for
administrative license revocations. There were 8,869
administrative license revocations statewide for dri
ving under the influence during that same period.
In Nebraska, approximately 1,000 people are
arrested for driving under the influence every month.
The Lincoln Police Department reported an
increase of 23 percent in 1998 of the number of peo
ple it arrested for driving under the influence. They
arrested 1,551 motorists in 1998. Of those, 229
involved accidents.
One motorist told a hearing officer at the DMV
that he knew he was too drunk to drive, so he made
his friend get out of the car before he drove.
My friend Jim and I went to the Zoo Bar and
rocked to the tunes of the Bel-Airs a few nights ago.
We both drank too much, too fast.
I tipped the bartender five bucks and asked him to
call us a cab. Not only did he call us a cab, but the bar
tender took the seat by the door after he made the call
and made sure we were alerted when our cab arrived.
We both got home safe that night. Neither oik of
us picked up a DUI and lost our license.
If you drink and drive, stop.
If you must drink, have a designated driver or
call a cab.
I saw Jeffrey Ireland’s face.
I don’t trait to see yours.
