Drinking safety is an important issue at UW-Madison, which has a reputation as one of the nation's top binge drinking schools. Incoming freshmen without prior experience could be embarrassed, arrested, sexually assaulted or even worse when involved in a situation with drinking.
In many people's eyes, house parties are a quintessential aspect of the freshman experience, and most freshmen encounter them at some point in their student life. Generally, a group of upperclassmen buy a keg or more of beer and throw a party at their house, where they charge people $3-$5 for a bottomless cup.
\They know kids in the dorms and those kids bring all their friends,"" said Ryan Corcoran, who graduated from UW-Madison this year. ""Most of the time it's pretty profit-motivated.""
""Some of them are fun, some of them are boring or too crowded,"" said UW-Madison junior Frances Wassell, referring to house parties. ""Parties that are fun have dancing.""
Despite their prevalence, house parties involving underage students are illegal. If the police do show up at a house party, they can give out tickets to the people throwing the party as well as underagers attending.
This leads to drastic actions on the part of intoxicated students eager to avoid a ticket. Wassell said she once jumped off a balcony when the cops busted a house party she was in.
Sgt. Emil Quast of the Madison Police Department emphasized the effects of over-consumption and the unregulated environment of house parties.
""No one is watching at an underage party to make sure people don't have too much to drink,"" he said. ""If you have too much to drink, the likelihood of your being arrested goes up dramatically. The probability or chance of being a victim of sexual assault also increases dramatically with alcohol intake.""
Corcoran illustrated Quast's claim that crime is often driven by alcohol.
""I was at a house party when some kids walked in. We had no idea who they were and this one kid was completely annihilated. A couple of African-American people were there,"" he said. ""The kid started making all these racial slurs towards them and then he pulled out a knife. They started beating him up until he was all bloody and I had to get his girlfriend to take him to the hospital.""
According to Stephanie Byrnes of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, a UW-Madison University Communications study found that in 2002, 20 percent of UW-Madison students experienced non-consentual sexual activity and 7 percent experienced non-consentual sexual intercourse. Seventy-one percent of these people had consumed alcohol beforehand and 53 percent of these incidents occurred during a person's freshman year.
In order to avoid this and other dangers, UW-Madison junior Kristin Wieben said people should always go to house parties with a friend who will keep an eye out for them.
""People don't know how much they can drink,"" said Wieben.
Some underagers avoid the negative aspects of house parties by going to bars instead. For freshmen, this entails obtaining a fake I.D. Wieben has had a fake since she was a freshman. By all accounts, fake I.D.s are relatively common on campus, and usually obtained from a friend-of-a-friend or an older sibling.
Luke Wegner, formerly a bouncer and now a manager at State Street Brats, 603 State St., gave a few of the methods bouncers use to check if an I.D. is fake:
""You can tell it's fake if it's poorly laminated. We have people take it out and check the specifics and the picture. We ask for a second form of I.D.,"" he said.
Students gave estimates for the cost of a fake I.D. ranging from $25 to $80.
""It depends on the quality,"" said a UW Madison student who used to make fake I.D.s on campus, and who wished to remain anonymous.
""There are better things to do with your time than go out to house parties and run around with fake I.D.s,"" Corcoran said. ""But if you are going to do so, be smart about it.\
