New excise program discourages responsible drinking

The Indiana Lifeline Bill, S.B. 274, spearheaded by IU Student Association President Justin Kingsolver, was introduced to help encourage students to be responsible if one of their friends is dangerously intoxicated and in need of medical attention.

While that bill awaits the governor’s signature, another government action, this time on the part of the Indiana State Excise Police, seeks to discourage responsible behavior.

The new program, which was rolled out Feb. 6, called Intensified Collegiate Enforcement, or ICE, “is intended to expand previous efforts to reduce underage possession and use of alcohol” in the IU, Ball State and Depauw University communities, according to the department’s website.

To do this, additional excise police will be deployed in these communities with the priority of seeking out alcohol-related infractions.

While efforts to curb drinking are laudable, to discourage the use of designated drivers — which is exactly what this program does — is counterproductive and dangerous.

The crackdown, according to IU’s Student Legal Services, has resulted in an uptick in the number of students being pulled over for things such as having license plate lights out or too many people in the backseat.

This is done not because the police care that a license plate light is out. Rather, they are looking for drunken people, even if they are not the driver.

Director of IU Student Legal Services Randy Frykberg said most students looking to go out and have a good time responsibly by having a designated driver don’t realize that their designated driver means nothing if they get pulled over and are drunk in the passenger seat.

This is because in Indiana any passenger — of-age or otherwise — who is intoxicated can receive a ticket for public intoxication if the passenger tells the officer he or she has been drinking and consents to a Breathalyzer test. And many people do consent because they don’t know they don’t have to.

Frykberg said students don’t realize that police officers need a warrant to search their vehicle and that only the driver is required to submit to a Breathalyzer test with the presumption of guilt if he or she refuses to.

“IU students answer questions thinking that if somebody in a uniform with a badge asks them questions that they’re obligated to sing like a bird, and they’re not,” Frykberg said.

“You need to tell the officer what your name is, and the officer can ask you for identification. You don’t have to say ‘Yes, I’m in the midst of committing a crime.’ Our system is not premised on your having to do that.

“The police always say, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and what they mean is, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way for me, the police officer.’”

Aside from suspicious pullovers that have nothing to do with erratic driving behavior, there has also been an increase in the number of tickets issued under another strange law.

The law says that underage drivers cannot transport any alcohol, even if it’s unopened and in the trunk of the car, and even if it’s in, for instance, a passenger’s jacket and they don’t know it’s there.

The crackdowns by these two laws alone have drastic consequences for all students who depend on designated drivers.

After all, what students — especially those who are underage — are going to want to risk going out of their way to help their intoxicated friends by giving them a ride if the police are going to punish them for it, or at least make their life more difficult?

And for intoxicated students, even using an IU safety escort can get you in trouble if your escort is pulled over.

While it’s nice that the Indiana State Excise Police would like to create a sober utopia in Bloomington and other ICE communities, they need to realize that many well-intentioned efforts can have consequences worse than those problems they are trying to solve.

Prohibition, which ironically the Indiana State Excise Police was created to enforce, is the greatest example of this. It saw the rise of a criminal underworld that took decades to stamp out.

Indiana would be well served to eliminate some of these laws that discourage the use of sober drivers, but in the meantime it can do good by ending programs such as ICE.

­— nperrino@indiana.edu