At the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, the Metropolitan Police Department began party patrols to monitor Burleith and West Georgetown from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. five nights a week, including weekend nights,  according to e-mails exchanged between Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners and MPD Second District officers.

Michelle Milam, who at the time was lieutenant of the PSA in which Georgetown is located (PSA 206), said that the patrols were concentrated in Burleith, where the majority of complaints were coming from. That concerned ANC Commissioner Ron Lewis, who said his West Georgetown constituents were just as disturbed by the noise as Burleith residents. He wrote:

[P]lease, let’s end these back and forth e-mails … Just tell us, please, short and simple, that there will be equal patrolling by the “party patrol” officers in west Georgetown and Burleith.”

Milam replied, “Yes, there will be active patrolling in all parts of Georgetown by PSA 206 members.”

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While our friends in Foggy Bottom may be outdoing us in terms of programming  boards and on-campus comedians, there’s one thing they’re still envious of us about: GERMS.

The GW equivalent of GERMS is a “the Emergency Medical Response Group,” or EMeRG.  Apparently EMeRG doesn’t have the same warm relations with the student body it serves that GERMS has.

Because of GW’s medical amnesty policies, EMeRG is required to transport anyone who is assessed for alcohol consumption to the GW Hospital.  According to the GW Hatchet, which is doing a three part series on their school’s medical amnesty policies, the rule discourages people from calling EMeRG and creates hostility towards the program because of the medical bills that accompany the mandatory hospital visit.

The Hatchet highlights GERMS as an example of what EMeRG could be with a few policy tweaks:

The Georgetown student’s relationship with the volunteer GERMS group is worlds apart from the GW student’s relationship with EMeRG. Most importantly, GERMS is not required to transport all students that are assessed to the hospital. The amnesty policy of Georgetown is such that students don’t fear calling GERMS.

After earning the dubious distinction of being ranked the 11th best party school by Playboy, the University of Maryland at College Park is mounting an effort to crack down on excessive partying this year, according to the Washington Post.  But with only 34 officers in its Department of Public Safety charged with controlling over 26,000 undergraduates, it’s a bit of a daunting task.

The force of 34 officers put up a good fight, busting dozens of parties in a matter of a few hours. The consequences of a bust can range from confiscation of alcohol to, in  rare cases, arrest, and the University often comes down hard with harsh administrative charges.

The easiest way to crack down on parties? Taking advantage of clueless freshmen:

On this Thursday night, Ecker drives through campus and the surrounding neighborhoods, easily picking out the freshmen, who travel in packs composed of nearly every person from their dorm floor.

In one such clump, everyone has a student ID around his or her neck, and a few students wear high school T-shirts. But the most obvious clue that they are freshmen? No red cups in hand, Ecker said. They haven’t learned to bring their own cups to keggers.

Additionally, the police are declaring war on a much more frightening enemy this fall: the “undesirables.” These would be the young men who gather at a popular location and harass the women walking by, especially those who are dressed up for the evening.

The harassment that normally begins as verbal assaults and gradually increases to grabbing, pinching, touching, and fondling later on in the night when traffic on the sidewalk becomes more congested. This also makes it more difficult to identify the perpetrators, some of whom are students themselves.

The GUNS girls would not approve…

Editor’s Note: In this week’s cover story, Molly Redden reported on Georgetown’s sordid, besotted past. In her research, she found some interesting insights into Georgetown’s gender relations in the mid-1960s.

This week’s cover story identifies 1966 as the start of two decades of outright debauchery at Georgetown, that being the year that the University first allowed alcohol in boys’ dorms. But not everyone was immediately ready to give in to lady liquor.

On November 3, The Hoya published “The GUNS Girl—Balancing Binge and Brain to Combat Conformity,” a recap of a symposium it had held where eight female GU Nursing School students indicated that they were anything but fine with extending the drinking-tolerant policy to girls’ dorms.

Some of the choicest quotes from the article include, “I’d hate to think of every girl sitting around, boozing it up,” and, “If you sit in and get binged every Friday well then you’re not right … in the head.”

“One girl,” the Hoya author wrote, “thought that drunk boys were at least funny, while the same cannot be said for drunk girls.”

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Hope for single beer sales springs eternal

Everyone’s favorite Advisory Neighborhood Commission returned this summer after their summer recess. Like any good Georgetown reunion, the most exciting parts involved alcohol.

Last year, the D.C. Council approved a ban on the sale of single beers and small bottles of liquor in certain areas of the city, including Georgetown. The law gives ANCs the power to decide on exemptions to the ban, and Georgetown’s ANC is currently in the process of picking a plan of action.

Commissioners Bill Starrels and Tom Birch have been looking into the issue and at the meeting Starrels seemed poised to issue a resolution saying the ANC wouldn’t entertain any exemptions. Starrels said he hasn’t heard many complaints about the ban, and that the number of “homelessly challenged individuals” in Key Park has dwindled.

However, Commissioner Charles Eason said he’d personally heard three complaints, and the owners of Dixie Liquor piped up to protest, saying the ban costs them $40,000 a year. In the end, ANC decided to deliberate on the issue further, and the hope for the grand return of single beers lives on.

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For the penultimate Prefrosh Preview, we’ll be tackling all the various vices you might be interested in engaging in during college: drinking, drugs, sex and smoking. As a disclaimer: Vox isn’t advocating underage drinking or the use of illegal drugs, and most of this information comes from outside sources, not firsthand experience.

Alcohol

Georgetown is definitely a drinking school, and on weekends you can almost always find a party somewhere on or near campus. When going out, there’s no quicker way to be identified as a somewhat obnoxious freshman than to travel with the entirety of your floor. It’s also seen as particularly poor form to crash a party, drain the booze and leave.

At Georgetown, people generally don’t charge guests admittance to parties (a fact your visiting friends will doubtlessly be shocked by). However, if you find a a kindly upperclassmen who frequently supplies you with liquor, it’s nice to reimburse them.

If you’re over 21 (or have an ID that says you are) and prefer bars, here are some of the more popular nearby options:

• Chadwicks (3205 K Street): Good happy hours and champagne brunches.
  
• Champions (1206 Wisconsin Avenue): A favorite among the underage crowd (although it has something of a checkered past).
• Epicurean (On campus, under Darnall): Offers karaoke, and you really can’t beat it for convenience.
• Old Glory (3139 M Street): Strong drinks; the covered back porch with a bar makes it convenient for smokers.
  
• Rhino (3295 M Street): Sketchy, but good wings and a good chance of spotting Real World cast members.
• Smith Point (1338 Wisconsin Avenue): Bastion of prep that prides itself on having a guest list; Late Night Shots central.
• Third Edition (1218 Wisconsin Ave): Relatively cheap; famous for having its exterior used in St. Elmo’s Fire.
• Tombs (1226 36th Street): The closest bar to campus and thus almost exclusively for students, but also the strictest with IDs.

How strict a given bar is with accepting fake IDs varies from bouncer to bouncer, but generally Vox would discourage you from trying your fake at Smith Point, Third Edition and Tombs.

If you’re looking to procure your own spirits, the best bets are Towne (1326 Wisconsin Avenue), Wagner’s (1717 Wisconsin Avenue) and Dixie (3429 M Street; you shouldn’t even think about attempting to use a fake at Dixie, though). Wisey’s also sells beer and wine.

If you’re tired of jostling at the bar for a watered-down rum and coke or an overpriced draft beer, Booey’s is a good bet. Its pitchers are among the cheapest around, and it is open until midnight.

More fun stuff likes drugs, sex and smoking after the jump!

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Too pretty by half

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a series we’ll be running in which we’ll review the happy hour offerings at Georgetown restaurants and bars.

If the happy hour at Bangkok Bistro sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is—at least as far as the drinks are concerned. At the door, Vox was told that the deal for $3 cocktails included the Bistro’s whole repetoire, from their $7.99 Mangorita (“A fresh mango with Sauza Tequila and Hiram Walker Mango Liquer blended to frozen perfection”) to the $8.99 Saketini (“Bombay Sapphire Gin mixed with Gekkeikan Sake, Bols Blue Curacao, and a lemon twist”) and all of the delicious, overpriced drinks in between.

Then, after sitting down, we were informed that the happy hour only covered their “20 o.z. Cocktails: the Fantastic,” and only non-blended drinks at that—so much for that Dirty Colada. And it only got worse from there.

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A new study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that binge drinking, drunk driving and alcohol-related deaths among college students rose over the past decade.  Among the troubling findings:

• Alcohol-related deaths among 18- to 24-year-old students increased from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005.
• The percentage of students who admitted to recently engaging in “episodic drinking” (also known as binge drinking) rose from 42 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 2005.
• The percentage of students who admitted to driving drunk in the past year rose from 26.5 percent in 1998 to 29 percent in 2005.
• The problem behaviors—binge drinking, drunk driving and alcohol-related deaths—rose among 21- to 24-year-old students but not among 18- to 20-year-olds.

According to lead researcher Ralph Higson, the findings are particularly troubling since the trend towards more dangerous drinking behavior has persisted despite improvements in education about alcohol abuse.

“”The fact that we’re not making progress is very concerning,” [Higson said] … “The irony is that during this same time period, our knowledge of what works as far as intervention in this age group has increased. That knowledge isn’t yet being put into place.”

The top 5 causes of Adult Arrests in Ward 2, from 2005 to March 2009

The top 5 causes of Adult Arrests Citywide, from 2005 to March 2009

In December, we bitched and moaned about the possibility that the Metropolitan Police Department had unduly increased its Possession of Open Container Arrests (POCAs) in the Second District, where Georgetown and George Washington University are located. And hey, who’s to say it wasn’t a Mark Carter crackdown?: POCAs were the only type of arrests that burgeoned in the months for which there was data (except for prostitution arrests. What??).

But despite our arch implications that some sort of conspiracy against students prompted these arrests, MPD seems less likely than ever before to come after you for your wide-mouthed Keystone: though POCAs were the fifth most common type of arrest for Ward 2 residents, 2008 saw the lowest number of POCAs for all the four years that data was available.

Those numbers are 727 POCAs for 2005, 531 for 2006, 357 for 2007, and 295 for 2008. They’re graphed (but not labeled—thanks OCTO!) above in purple.

While a glance at the chart reveals that the number of most types of arrests in Ward 2 fell overall in the past four years, POCAs were the type of arrests which saw the greatest decline: POCAs fell by 59 percent from 2004 to 2008, while “Other Misdemeanor Offenses” arrests fell 47.5 percent, “No Permit” arrests fell 42 percent, and Traffic Offence arrests fell 38 percent in the same time period. Assault arrests rose.

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The top 5 causes of adult arrests in the Second District, September 13

The top 5 causes of adult arrests in the Second District, January 10

In December, we wondered whether Commander Mark Carter was harshing on students due to an upswing in Possesion of Open Container Arrests (top chart). The numbers didn’t look good for him—POCAs leapt just when he became Commander of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Second District.

Upon reanalyzing the top causes of arrest in 2008, MPD 2D’s updated statistics reveal that in 2008, 2D forces were far busier arresting prostitutes than handing out POCAs (bottom chart, found here). That situation reverses, however, when you consider the numbers for the months Carter was top cop.

Yes, sexual solicitation was the fifth most frequent circumstance for arrest in 2008, with arrests peaking at 40 in June, 54 in August, 35 in November, and 36 in December. They totaled 274. POCAs, meanwhile, peaked at 34, 36, 54, and 43 during May, June, July, and August respectively. They totaled 241.

During May through September, however, POCAs totaled 187 with prostitution-related arrests trailing at 136. (Carter was Commander for the full months of May-October, but POCA numbers are not available past September.)

So it all still looks very suspicious. Numbers say the priorities of new Commander Matthew Klein’s forces lie with traffic, permit, and assault arrests. We wish we could link you to our sourcefor the September 13th chart, but it seems to have disappeared from MPD’s website. But what do you expect from a website that still lists their FOIA officer from five years ago?

Graphics from MPDC.