Wisconsin’s Beer

Culture Impacts
Drinking On
Campus
Community Health Specialist Sue Pastor sees a strong tie between the history and tradition
of Wisconsin’s beer culture and drinking on the UW-Madison campus By: Arielle Crane

A
t the Camp Randall football stadium, administrators are inconsistent in dealing with, and

home of the Wisconsin Badgers, it is Sue is trying to change that.

hard not to feel an overwhelming sense “As a state, Wisconsin has a drinking problem.

of pride and joy. Excited fans, red shirts, painted We lead the nation in binge drinking and underage

faces, parents, children, and college students fill the drinking statistics,” she says. “We must focus our

entire stadium. Coupled with their love of football attention on having the university address these is-

is also their love for beer, two things rarely seen sues.” Not only is

as separate and distinct, especially in the state of UW-Madison vulnerable to these same statistics

Wisconsin. but it is also the only school in the UW system that

And therein lies the problem, according to Sue has a specifically high density of bars and ways to

Pastor UHS Community Health Specialist for the get alcohol.

University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2007.

When she first started with the University, her job

description was limited to dealing with the effects

of high-risk drinking. However, she soon found

herself tackling the real underlying issue at hand:

Wisconsin’s larger beer culture and its impact on

UW students. This is an issue that the UW-Madison

 “I see an intersection of two trends that is causing
this drinking culture on campus: the alcohol culture
in the state of Wisconsin and the beer industry as-
sociating itself with college sports,” Sue says. The
history of homegrown breweries in Wisconsin adds
a strong cultural attachment to drinking while the
multinational beer corporations gear their adver-
tisements to college sports. Combined, Sue thinks
these two factors are at the core of the high drinking
problem here on campus.
“The history of homegrown
breweries and gearing beer
advertising to college sports
are the two factors at the
core of this high drinking
problem.”
The University has made some advances towards
addressing this problem, but it is inconsistent with
its sanctions to violate alcohol abuse, “probably
because of Wisconsin’s larger alcohol culture,” she
hypothesizes.
From 1997-2007, the university granted alcohol
and health specialists the right to tackle environ-
mental strategies to reduce the binge-drinking prob-
lem. In 2002, UW-Madison officials worked with the
local city government and Tavern Owners to drop
their drink specials and discounts in an effort to curb
binge drinking among college students. The state
Supreme Court ruled this as an anti-trust violation
and the bar owners reverted back to offering these
specials. Problem not solved.
Then in 2007, when Sue became the community
health specialist, she worked with the local Madison
police and started the Alcohol Task Force Sym-
posium to address environmental approaches to
prevention, but this was dismantled after only two
years because “administrators felt it was unneces-
sary,” Sue adds.
The real solution, she concludes, lies in the history
of Wisconsin’s beer tax, which has not been raised
since 1969 and is the 3rd lowest in the country. “This
is a HUGE problem,” Sue emphasizes, “the Tavern
League of Wisconsin needs to pay up and pay their
share…so that taxpayers are [not] paying the cost
of addiction and the ramifications of drunken driv-
ing.” This funding is needed to expand programs
that target alcohol abuse.
However, it is difficult to legislate social policy
especially in a state where the beer drinking culture
is so endemic to and intertwined with the fabric of
day-to-day life and social mores. Community-wide
efforts must be made to address the drinking prob-
lem on campus, Sue concludes, or the tie between
Wisconsin’s beer culture and drinking on this col-
lege campus will only get stronger.