The Girl Talk tasering incident was almost bound to happen. Girl Talk is known for rowdy shows and being drunk at the show and dancing your ass off sounds a lot more appealing than being sober and only dancing half your ass off.

Of course, the Gargoyle’s (probably University-mandated) no-rowdiness policy makes it an awful venue for Girl Talk. The SAM basement, meanwhile, may have been the perfect venue. A big reason for this is certainly the availability of alcohol at SAM, and the lack thereof at the Gargoyle.

More than anything else, the Girl Talk incident illustrates the need for alcohol to be served at the Gargoyle. Because drinking is not a possibility at the Gargoyle, concert goers who want to be drunk at the shows, which is not a small amount of people, have to drink before getting to the Gargoyle. This leads to bad decisions before the show, which obviously leads to bad decisions after the show.

Having alcohol available at the Gargoyle could help prevent this. If someone at the concert was able to drink at the show, then he or she would not have to pre-game as much. The apex of drunkenness, in which someone feels the urge to drop trousers, could happen afterward in the safety of a dorm instead of outside the Gargoyle in close proximity to a Diwali celebration.

Furthermore, the process of actually having to go get a drink would discourage over-drinking. If the alcohol was being sold, there would be a disincentive to drinking too much because it would cost a lot of money. And people would not want to leave the show to get another drink. Granted, this may not stop pre-gaming at all. But I think that it would turn the concert into more of a pre-party than the main event of the night.

There is precedent for college clubs having alcohol. The Billiken Club at SLU serves alcohol and brings in bands that are very similar to the ones the Gargoyle gets. Unless there’s a big cover-up going on, there haven’t been any tasings yet. If it can work at SLU, there’s no reason that it couldn’t work here also.

Having alcohol at the Gargoyle would cost more money for the Gargoyle, especially in terms of paying B&D for the extra security needed with alcohol. But this cost can be covered by reversing last year’s budget decisions that took money away from Executive Committees like the Gargoyle-which should happen regardless.

It certainly seems like the SAM Girl Talk show was better than the Gargoyle Girl Talk show.

In an interview with MTV, Gregg Gillis, the man behind Girl Talk stated, “That [free] show was [better] attended than the real show. The basement was packed, and there were 200 or 300 people all over the house. There was no shoving, and everyone was having a good time. It was like a classic college scene: No one standing still, people making out with their girlfriends, people shotgunning beers and crowd-surfing, all with the lights on the whole time.”

Shotgunning beers shouldn’t be allowed at the Gargoyle. But I don’t think the University would want people shotgunning beers anywhere else either.

Drinking and having a good time should be allowed at the Gargoyle, instead of implementing policies that encourage dangerous behavior.

Daniel is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

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