By Hailey Heinz
If a new proposal is passed into law by the Boston Licensing Board, throwing a keg party could get a bit riskier.
The proposal, which is scheduled to come before the board by the end of September, would require all liquor stores in Boston to provide the Boston Police Department (BPD) with a nightly list of the names and addresses of everyone who purchased a keg that day.
Liquor stores are already required to keep a log of this information, and already provide it to the police upon request. The difference is that now, information will go straight to the police automatically, which makes some students more hesitant to buy a keg.
“I think it’s an invasion of privacy,” said junior electrical engineering major Jon Giffen.
Giffen is 21 and has bought kegs for parties in the past.
“The fact that they’re having to give it straight to the police makes me more wary of buying a keg. I’ll probably just buy beer balls from now on,” Giffen said.
Despite the objections of students like Giffen, Northeastern administrators are supportive of the idea because it could cut down on big parties where underage drinking takes place.
“I think it’s fair to say that where there’s a keg, there’s going to be a large party,” said Jeff Doggett, director of government relations and community affairs.
He said at large parties, the hosts often don’t know all the people at the party, and consequently don’t know whether or not they’re of age to drink.
“If there’s a student who says,’you know, I don’t want them to know I bought a keg because I’m going to throw a large party and there’s going to be underage drinking,’ I think it’s good that it scares that person off. If a person is using a keg appropriately, it shouldn’t change their actions one bit,” Doggett said.
Since the language of the proposal has not been finalized, it hasn’t been established whether the log of keg sales would be sent to Northeastern Police (NUPD) as well as BPD. Dan Pokaski, chair of the Boston Licensing Board, said the information could be made available to NUPD if they requested it.
James Ferrier, associate director of public safety, said if the keg registry were made available to his department, the information would be used to stop activity that was in violation of Northeastern policy.
“We would take a glance at that list and see if any of those were Northeastern buildings,” Ferrier said.
It is against university policy to have a keg in university housing, including leased properties, and Ferrier said NUPD would look into it if the records showed a keg had been taken to a Northeastern address. He said they would also look into kegs that were taken to surrounding neighborhoods.
“If it was in a campus neighborhood where we’ve had noise complaints before, we would keep an eye on that party for the evening, but that’s about all we would do,” Ferrier said.
Pokaski admits there are loopholes in the proposal, since most students don’t have their college addresses on their identification and could easily give a false address. However, since all kegs are tagged with the name of the liquor store where they were purchased, police could investigate if they found a keg at a different address than the one given, and students could potentially be charged with giving false information.
Senior mechanical engineering major Rick Therrien said he doesn’t think police should spend their time tracking down kegs.
“I think the police should be concentrating more on catching killers than busting up college parties. I know they have more important things to do than worry about almost-21-year-olds drinking,” Therrien said. “I don’t think it’s going to stop anything, just change the way people party.”
If the proposal causes a decrease in keg sales, liquor stores stand to take a hit in business. Nonetheless, Christina Petrillo, manager of Liquor Land, said she fully supports the proposal.
“I actually personally think it’s a great idea,” Petrillo said. “I think that there’s a lot of irresponsibility when it comes to college drinkers, and I hope that this would be one way to curtail that.”
Petrillo said the store sells about 10 kegs during an average weekend, and she estimates the majority of the kegs go to college parties. She said even if the proposal did affect their sales, she wouldn’t have a problem with it because she supports the goals of the proposal. She said the store would notify anyone who purchased a keg their information would go directly to the police.
Pokaski said individual liquor stores would have the option of providing the information to the BPD in any form, whether by phone, fax or e-mail, and said the proposal ultimately comes down to making things a little more convenient for police.
“The police can go in and get the information anyway … this just makes it a little easier on the police,” Pokaski said. “This way if you have five kegs going to Brighton the police know about it.”
– Staff writer Amanda Carswell contributed to this report.
