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Sunday, February 01, 2009
Ind. Law - Notre Dame students hear about alcohol and the law"
Liz Harter has an interesting story today in the South Bend Tribune. Some quotes:
The speaker began his lecture by showing a picture he found on Facebook, a social networking Web site, of underage Notre Dame students holding alcohol in their profile pictures and another of two girls drinking beer while driving.“Those are public pictures on the Notre Dame network,” said the speaker, C.L. Lindsay. He noted he joined the Notre Dame network, which requires a Notre Dame e-mail address to join, by “borrowing” one.
“A lot of people have their pictures open to the Notre Dame network; that’s a problem.”
Town-grown relations, or the relationship between the University of Notre Dame and the South Bend area, was the agenda at Notre Dame’s “Alcohol, Parties and the Law” lecture last week.
Notre Dame’s student government brought Lindsay, the executive director of the Coalition for Student and Academic Rights, to campus to help students understand their rights when it comes to off-campus partying. Lindsay used humor and pictures of dolls in compromising situations to present important information to the students.
CO-STAR offers free legal help to students. Lindsay is the author of the book “The College Student’s Guide to the Law.”Lindsay then went on to talk about South Bend laws regarding consuming and buying alcohol off campus. Consumption is not illegal in 14 states, but possessing alcohol as a minor is illegal in all 50, he said.
“It’s really impossible to consume beer without possessing it at some point,” Lindsay joked.
He warned, though, that it is “way better” to be underage and drinking than to be someone who is older than 21 and serving alcohol to people underage.
“(Police) want to get to the people who are enabling drinking more than they want to get the people drinking,” he said. “It’s an infraction for every (underage) person that’s at your party.”
If there are 17 underage drinkers at the party, he said, the host would be fined $17,000 and could spend up to eight and a half years in jail.
“It will never be enforced at this level, but that’s where it will start,” he said. “This means that a $5,000 fine and a year on parole is a really good deal.”
Lindsay also provided tips to students on how to throw a party without the police getting involved.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 1, 2009 09:44 AM
Posted to Indiana Law