Matthew's Mug temporarily shuts down

Jamie Rosen Staff Writer

Matthew’s Mug was closed last Thursday, Jan. 27 through Saturday, Jan. 29 due to incidents of underage drinking and vandalism earlier in the week. The Mug staff met Friday to discuss ways to ensure that the Mug is run in accordance with New York’s state laws.

An unknown person plugged the drain in the men’s bathroom and turned on the sink at the Mug Saturday, Jan. 22. Once the resulting flood was stopped by unclogging the drain, the offender again clogged the drain and turned on the water, this time removing the faucet handles.

According to a security report, a student then fell and hit his face on the floor in the men’s bathroom and was taken to St. Francis Hospital with a head injury. Outside assistance was requested to repair the sink.

On Wednesday, Jan. 26, an underage girl found staggering in the snow outside of Lathrop initially reported that she had been drinking at the Mug, according to a security report.

She was also admitted to St. Francis Hospital and later told Associate Director of the Retreat Kenneth Oldehoff that she had obtained alcohol outside of the Mug.

Oldehoff, who oversees the operation of the Mug, said security will increase efforts to prevent further incidents of vandalism and detect underage intoxication.

“We’re going to add a person to work on the floor, and security is going to come into the Mug more often,” he said. “There seems to be a problem with people arriving at Matthew’s Mug already intoxicated. We’ve instituted a rule this year that if somebody is drinking underage, the Mug will close down for the rest of the night. ”

Mug manager/bartender Josh Lucido ’05 said that minors obtain alcohol from other sources before entering the Mug. “We’re not serving anybody underage,” he said. “It’s a college campus. They can get it from a million different places and then show up. Short of making the Mug strictly a 21-and-over venue, I think that that’s always going to be a risk.”

Mug manager/bartender Emily Ross ’05 said that even before Friday’s meeting, bartenders were more aware of underage drinking this school year than in the past.

“I feel like it was a lot easier to pass off drinks [to underclassmen] before, but we’ve been trying to be much more careful about watching,” she said. “If there’s a problem, we’re liable, and I think bartenders this year are particularly careful as a result.”

This year’s increased enforcement of alcohol regulations may be one cause of last semester’s decline in Mug attendance, Lucido said. “The policies have become more stringent this year. Before, if you were caught drinking [underage] in your dorm or at a campus event, you’d have to meet with a House Adviser and take [an] alcohol class and that would be the end of it. Now you get your Mug privileges revoked if you have a party in your room. I think people just would rather try and do it out of sight,” he commented.

Partially as a result of increased efforts to prevent underage drinking, including an ID swipe that confirms the authenticity of IDs, and partially because fewer upperclassmen have been going to the Mug, alcohol sales have decreased since last year, said Oldehoff.

“Across the board, it’s just not as busy as it was last year,” he said. “We’re not going through as many bracelets, and we’re making less money.”

“As far as business that we do, some nights it’s a third of what we did last year,” said Mug manager/bartender Telemachus Rafaelidys ‘05.

Mug security officer Betty Francis said students often show up after going to other bars. “It seems like there are a lot of places on the outside where they’re going to, like the Dutch, and when they come back, they come to the Mug,” she said. “Around 1 a.m. or 1:30 a.m. it gets really crowded.”

Counseling and Assistance in Response to Rape and Exploitive Sexual Activity (CARES) counselor Katie O’Brien ’05 said that some students perceive the Mug as an uncomfortable social environment. “I think that some people do think it can be pretty sketchy and that it’s not the nicest of places,” she said. “You should be able to go to places like clubs and the Mug and not have to feel disrespected and not have to be uncomfortable if you just want to go someplace and dance.”

Underage students caught drinking undergo administrative adjudication, meeting with Director of Campus Activities Ray Parker to establish guilt or innocence.

First time offenders are sentenced to three hours of sanctioned service and a two-hour alcohol incident workshop (or an alcohol education course for underage students), and they are banned from the Mug for four months.

A subcommittee of the Alcohol Taskforce will make recommendations to the Committee on College Life concerning alcohol-related issues at the Mug before March break.

The subcommittee may also discuss ways to increase Mug attendance, Parker said. “If the Mug has lost popularity, I think that the Alcohol Taskforce is very interested in making sure that that social place will be useful,” he said.

However, some question how wise it is to have a source of alcohol on campus at all, since many students are underage.

“The question with the Mug is, ‘why have an on-campus bar at all?’” said Assistant to the Dean of the College Andrew Meade. “[But] there’s no other social space like the Mug.”

The Mug is meant to be an on-campus venue where students can go in the evening. According to Meade, closing the club down could potentially cause students to seek more off-campus spots, which would raise other security and safety-related issues.