Creating Community, One Drink at a Time

Last week, the beer stopped flowing for a couple of days at the West End, the best known and most 18-year-old friendly of Columbia’s bars. Because of a police raid in November, the owners went to court and the bar was shut down. Now, the bar is open again. For Columbia students and local residents, it was a surreal moment: more than anyplace else, students could count on the West End to accept their shoddy IDs, which were presented tongue-in-cheek to bouncers who turned people away so infrequently that it almost became a mark of honor to be refused service there.

It has long been a game everybody plays: students acquire a fake ID, the West End pretends not to suspect anything, and the police ignore the whole silly spectacle. Unlike those at other colleges, Columbia students have the luxury of drinking in their rooms or going out without too much fear of having their nights disrupted. It’s a perk. Depending on how serious the New York Police Department is, the ritual may be in danger.

This does not seem to bother students much; most have reacted with disdain. One first-year quoted by Spectator said, “I think they had it coming, because they were pretty negligent of the law.” This sort of remark is typical of students.

The accusations riled Katie Gardner, who owns the West End with her husband, enough that she wrote a letter to the editor in response. “I can only hope that the majority of the Columbia University population doesn’t feel that the West End got what it deserved,” she wrote, before launching into a long defense of the bar. “I also hope that the majority of Columbia supports us in our sincere effort to provide a fun place with delicious food and drink for all who come here. We have always recognized our unique relationship with Columbia. How could we not?... I know it may sound corny, but today’s customers will have tomorrow’s reminiscences and many of them will include The West End.”

Columbia students, a cynical lot, like to laugh at the West End. But Gardner’s letter is correct. The West End does have a special place in the hearts of many Columbia students. The tee-shirts worn by the staff—“Where Columbia had its first beer”----—tell the truth. No, it’s not the world’s best bar, regardless of the opinion of www.playboy.com, which featured it for some reason as the college bar of the month for February.

Still, the bar is synonymous with Columbia’s social life. Even as many move on past the West End, it is the first-year bar, and bars are never quite as special after the first year of college.

Even if she’s right, though, Gardner is changing the subject. The student’s comment, to which she did not respond at all, dealt with the West End’s policy of regularly serving alcohol to minors. And he was right—by legal standards, the West End did deserve to be closed. The West End intentionally and consistently violates the law, allowing underage students to enter without being carded before 11 o’clock and on quiet nights. They also allow IDs that are clearly fake; my favorite West End story involves the white girl from South Carolina who got in using a black male’s ID. The law says bars are supposed to be a little stricter than that.

Most college students do not need to be convinced that the drinking age should be lowered. Laws that are ignored and, for the most part, unenforced only serve to weaken respect for the government. One of the first lessons college students learn is that as long as we are careful and keep it relatively quiet, we can choose to ignore the law and receive only a wink and a nod as a consequence.

To some extent, this makes sense. The argument most commonly trotted out to support a drinking age of 21—that 19-year-olds are too young to drink and be trusted with car keys—does not apply in New York City, where virtually nobody drives after drinking.

But the drinking age isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither are underage drinkers. The West End has always been a relatively safe place for students to go on the weekend and release anxiety, as have the other more lenient bars in the area. If the police take those away, what will happen?

One can only guess where students would go, but it is certainly reasonable to assume that wherever it is would be less regulated, and less a central meeting place, than the West End. As a result, we are left with bar owners who refuse to follow the law and police who may be cracking down on them.

This is bad for Columbia: at a school that so notoriously lacks community, losing another place where everybody can meet will only partition us further. Maybe it’s time to stop laughing and thank Katie Gardner for breaking the law.

Matt Carhart is a Columbia College senior majoring in English. The Lights Going Out on Broadway runs alternate Fridays.