The College Fix

Maryland, the only state to explicitly refuse to enforce Prohibition, recently complicated its heritage: It banned the retail sale of alcoholic beverages of 190 proof or higher as of July 1.

Senate Bill 75, signed by Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley in May, was widely seen as targeting the 190-proof variety of Everclear, the prime ingredient in the college-party concoction known as “jungle juice.”

It’s not the first state to ban or regulate the sale of 190-proof alcohol – neighboring West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania have similar bans. But Maryland’s ban may be the most closely linked to binge drinking and sexual assault.

University presidents including Frostburg State’s Jonathan Gibralter supported the Maryland ban.

In an op-ed for The Baltimore Sun, Gibralter argued that while students will undoubtedly drink, the nature of drinks such as Everclear is dangerous. Because grain alcohol is tasteless and odorless, students do not know how much they are actually drinking, unlike wine, beer or even whiskey, Gibralter said.

According to Frostburg State spokesperson Liz Medcalf, the Maryland ban also has the support of The Maryland Collaborative to Reduce College Drinking and Related Problems, a state-funded program that deals with binge drinking on campus. Gibralter serves on its board. The College Presidents Working Group to Address Harmful Student Drinking, part of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, also supports the ban, she said.

But Frostburg State has “no plans to ban the possession of 190-proof liquor on campus for those students of legal drinking age,” Medcalf said in an e-mailed statement to The College Fix. “FSU enforces state laws regarding possession of all alcoholic beverages among those who are underage.”

Towson University President Maravene Loeschke also supported the ban, lobbying for the bill’s passage this year.

According to Gay Pinder, a spokesperson for Towson, the university supports the ban because it will “discourage a majority of students from drinking this particular high proof alcohol,” even if the drink can be bought out of state.

Twenty percent of Maryland students are “high-risk” consumers of alcohol before they start college, and “midway through their first semester on campus,” that rate jumps to 30 percent, Pinder told The College Fix, citing Towson’s AlcoholEdu program report for the past school year. “High-risk” is  defined as “four or more drinks for women and five or more for men on at least one occasion within a two week period,” she said.

Fraternities and sororities have been quiet on the issue.  Neither the University of Maryland-College Park’s inter-fraternity council nor Towson’s fraternity or sorority council responded to requests for comment on the ban.

Several sexual assault awareness groups said the law fails to address the real causes of sexual assault, instead placing blame on alcohol and the victims.

Getting consent and teaching people “how to be respectful of their sexual partners” will address the real causes of sexual assault, Tracey Vitchers of Students Active for Ending Rape told The Daily Beast.

“The key to ending sexual violence is dealing with things like consent and culture,” Lisae Jordan, executive director of Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, told The Daily Beast. “At the same time I don’t fault the Legislature for taking this step,” she added, saying her group does not take an official stance on the ban and that it wasn’t a bad idea to address high-potency alcohol.

David Marberger, president of the Maryland State Licensed Beverage Association, told The Baltimore Sun the law blames his industry “for a problem it didn’t create” and speculated that a future bill could target “180-proof” alcohol.

College Fix contributor Matt Lamb is a student at Loyola University-Chicago.

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