November 17 - The Georgetown Voice

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John briskly stopped the van
in the middle of the road, allowing
me to swiftly unbuckle my seatbelt
and exit the passenger-side
door of the vehicle. I raced out of
the van toward the two huddled
bodies lying on top of each other
in the middle of the black concrete
on P Street and screamed, “Is everything
alright?”
The fi rst body looked up and
made eye contact with me. “Yeah,
he’s my roommate,” he responded.
“We’re just … uh … wrestling.”
The roommate verifi ed the
claim.
It’s not every night I witness
an impromptu drunken wrestling
match in the middle of the streets
of Georgetown. Then again, it’s
not every night I volunteer in the
SafeRides van.
Last Friday, John Morris (COL
’13) and I spent our night roaming
the streets of Georgetown, picking
up students and delivering
them to their desired destinations.
Armed with the knowledge
that I once crashed my Volvo into
a parked car in rural New Jersey,
Morris decided to spend the duration
of the night—seven hours—
driving the van, a task he did with
exceptional poise. I sat in the passenger
seat, fi ddled with the iPod,
and responded to the command
station for pick up requests via
radio.
voices the georgetown voice 15
Respectful mayhem: a night at the helm of SafeRides
by Tom Bosco
FLICKR
This is what SafeRides looked like Saturday morning after Tom took the wheel.
Whipped cream-flavored
Burnett’s vodka in hand, two
Jane Hoyas approach the cashier
at Towne Wine and Liquor
on Wisconsin Avenue
and engage in familiar debate
about splitting the bill—“I’m
out of money … Buy you a froyo
at Sweet Green tomorrow?”
“Perf!”
Unfortunately, the situation
was not perfect. With
$13 in hand, the thirsty ladies
thought they had enough cash
to pay for the vodka, but they
forgot about one of D.C.’s
more sinister institutions—alcohol
taxes.
In response to the District’s
grim financial outlook, Mayor
Vincent Gray signed the FY
2012 Emergency Budget Support
Act on June 29, 2011. In
addition to altering municipal
property and income tax
Occupy Towne
rates in an effort to boost city
revenue, Gray approved an increase
in the tax on the sale of
alcohol for off-premises consumption
(e.g. buying Natty
at Towne) from 9 to 10 percent.
D.C. is known for high
taxes, and alcohol is no exception.
When you account for the
fact that D.C. has a patchwork
of taxes on both production
and sales, D.C. has one of the
highest liquor taxes in the nation.
Though seemingly negligible,
the tax hike is estimated
to bring in an additional $2.9
million annually. While austerity
and fiscal responsibility
have been an unfortunate but
necessary response to deficits
from Birmingham, Ala. to Athens,
Ga., alcohol taxes are an
unjust and unethical way to
get budgets back in the black.
Like any other excise tax,
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Over the course of the night,
we saw both the mundane and
the amusing. We drove a few
wonderfully polite students to
Safeway. Ten minutes later, a few
friends had to carry a girl who was
too drunk to walk into the van in
order to get her home safely. Later
in the night, we picked up people
at the Emergency Room and
brought them home, on our way
passing two students lying down
on the 35th Street sidewalk, casually
texting.
Students didn’t make up
the entirety of our interactions.
In Burleith, an eight-point buck
stared head-on at the van as we
dropped a passenger off at home,
only to sprint away moments
later.
Throughout the experience,
my perceptions of the Georgetown’s
neighborhood relations
changed.
Georgetown students, on the
whole, were respectful of the service.
Those who used the service
to travel to parties and bars were
traveling a long distance and benefi
ted from a ride. The drunken
students—who I had been most
excited to pick up because of
the amusement they would provide—were
respectful of the vehicle
and grateful for the lift.
alcohol taxes are inherently regressive;
they place a greater
financial burden on the poor
than the rich. But this assumes
that the rich and the poor consume
alcohol at similar rates.
Unfortunately this doesn’t
seem to be the case.
Despite a lack of hard data,
both personal experience and
common sense suggest that,
Carrying On
by Keaton Hoffman
A rotating column by Voice senior staffers
in terms of off-premises consumption,
students purchase
alcohol at a much greater rate
than adults. These same students,
on average, have much
more limited incomes than the
adult population. So alcohol
taxes, more so than any other
tax, place an unfair burden on
American youth. Add this to
the dire problems of youth unemployment,
ever increasing
student indebtedness, and the
fact that, particularly in D.C.,
students are not registered
to vote in the districts where
they go to school, and alcohol
taxes seem less like a quick fix
for sagging budgets and more
Over the course of a sevenhour
period, only one student was
disrespectful to the service, and
that’s because he knew Morris and
me and wanted to act like an idiot.
(On Monday, when I told him I
was writing about how respectful
Georgetown students had been, he
responded, “Seriously? I humped
your van.”)
The most striking thing I realized
was how quiet Georgetown
students are on the streets late at
night—with the obvious exception
of the area outside Tuscany Café
at 2 a.m. The aforementioned kids
wrestling, lying down and texting,
and going to parties were all virtually
silent in the streets when they
were walking or when we were
picking them up.
Still, while we may be well
behaved, we are a presence late
at night and a large number of
residents in the community put up
with us.
Time and time again, our
neighbors vilify Georgetown students
for causing a ruckus at night,
making noise, and improperly disposing
of trash. Maybe one Friday
night is too small of a sample size
to come to a reasonable conclusion,
but in my limited experience
at Georgetown, it’s evident that
even late at night, students are well
like a serious injustice against
students.
Fundamental to modern
democracies is the idea that
states exist to secure liberties,
not act as a moral compass
and take them away. Historically
this has not been the
case, and states have imposed
numerous restrictions on the
consumption of goods deemed
harmful to society. But while
precedent may be on the side
of prohibiting “sinful” vices
like prostitution or cocaine,
the values of modern democracies
are not.
Assuming that individual
alcohol consumption in itself
does not harm others (a claim
that Mothers Against Drunk
Driving and other groups
would dispute) a truly liberal
state would allow its citizens
to be free to consume it. We
can look to the ban on the controversial
ingredients of caffeine,
taurine, and guarana in
Four Loko as a failure of the
state to protect our freedom.
But is targeted taxation of alcohol
on par with an outright
ban?
In On Liberty, John Stuart
Mill argued that “to tax stimulants
for the sole purpose of
making them more difficult
to be obtained, is a measure
behaved. Yes, some students may
cause a disruption once in a while,
but a few sour apples should not
ruin the whole batch.
And if I’m going to give a benefi
t of the doubt to the students, I
have to give the same to the neighbors—the
vocal minority of the
neighbors has a problem with us,
not the indifferent majority.
Riding around in SafeRides for
a night reminded me that I live in
a shared community. For the most
part, Georgetown students respect
and understand where the neighbors
stand, and the neighbors understand
they live in the midst of a
college community. We shouldn’t
be absolutist when saying the
“neighbors” hate us or “Georgetown
students” are misbehaved.
That’s not true. A large portion of
the neighbors has learned to live
with a bunch of well-behaved college
students. A few neighbors
hate Georgetown students like
my friend, who go around late at
night, and hump vans.
Sorry buddy, I still love you.
Tom Bosco is a
senior in the MSB.
On Saturday nights
Tom roams the
streets looking for
lonely kids ready to
wrestle.
differing only in degree from
their entire prohibition; and
would be justifiable only if
that were justifiable.” For example,
imagine the individual
too poor to afford alcohol under
a new tax. To her, the government
might as well reinstitute
prohibition, because a tax
eliminates her ability to buy
alcohol.
Though somewhat extreme,
this case illustrates the
assault on liberty inherent in
any targeted taxation. When
those targeted taxes that seek
to control public behavior by
appealing to general notions
of morality, affectionately labeled
“sin” taxes, the state
oversteps its role.
It’s time for students to express
their concerns over rising
liquor taxes and not allow
the tax burden to be unfairly
shifted. In 2010, with support
from breweries, economists,
and drinkers (students), a Massachusetts
initiative did just
that, eliminating liquor taxes
altogether. Cheers to that.
Keaton Hoffman is a
junior in the SFS. Unfortunately
he won’t
be particpating in
Occupy Towne, they
have a ban on hipster
glasses.