Keep 21-only ordinance in force

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Iowa City voters must decide by Tuesday whether the city should keep barring 19- and 20-year-olds from bars. We think they should by voting “no” to repealing the 21-only ordinance on the ballot.

Only a few months in effect, the ordinance already is having an impact on Iowa City's alcohol-soaked culture.

Since June 1, alcohol-related arrests are down, reports of sexual and other assaults are down, alcohol-related emergency room admissions are down.

Anti-21 proponents' dire predictions that raising the bar-entry age would cause chaos in Iowa City's neighborhoods simply haven't come true.

It's high time that Iowa City joined other towns that are home to Big Ten and Big 12 schools in barring underage people from bars - for good.

If cities like Madison, Wis., and Ames can hold the line against allowing underage people in bars, surely Iowa City can, too.

We don't buy anti-21 arguments that the ordinance unfairly limits underage residents' access to entertainment. The ordinance doesn't prohibit underage patrons before 10 p.m., or from establishments which make more than half their income from food.

What's more, Iowa City councilors recently passed two exceptions to the 21-ordinance that will allow underage people at live music shows and other acts. The UI has stepped up to provide more late-night, alcohol-free activities. Businesses could do the same.

If anti-21 activists truly were concerned about student safety, as they say, they would vote “no” to repealing 21-only.

As Rape Victim Advocacy Program Executive Director Karla Miller wrote in a recent guest column, women visiting bars are no safer from sexual assault than they are at house parties. “Safety is not a location,” she wrote. “It's what we do to make a place safer.”

Other local leaders are speaking out. UI President Sally Mason, UI football Coach Kirk Ferentz, Iowa City Mayor Matt Hayek and the Johnson County Medical Society all have voiced their support of the 21-only ordinance.

So, too, are local high-school administrators - recently telling a Gazette reporter that a higher bar-entry age makes it more difficult for local high school students to blend in with the bar crowd.

Anti-21 leaders say it's impossible to keep underage people from drinking if that's what they want to do. They're right that no one change will stop every underage person from drinking alcohol.

But that doesn't mean we should make it easy.

The drinking culture in Iowa City and the UI is much more than average for a college community. More UI students drink alcohol, and they drink more than their peers at nearly any other university. Nearly 70 percent of UI undergraduates qualify as binge drinkers.

Studies routinely have shown that reducing underage access to alcohol is an important step in reducing both underage and binge drinking.

Evidence is building that the 21-ordinance is doing just that. Voters should keep it on the books.