If the City Council thinks that ridding Ames bars of drink specials and alcohol buffets will end binge drinking as we know it, they are sadly mistaken.

As some people have already pointed out, if we can’t get our alcohol cheap at the bar, we will go somewhere else. Besides that, I have two other points to make.

Number one: It is my belief that most alcohol related deaths are from idiots doing 21 shots on their birthday or for some stupid frat ritual. None of the alcohol buffets in town that I know of include shots. Also, at Big Shots’ all-you-can-drink on Thursday night, there are so many people there that you can’t even get up to the bar.

Now my second and most important point …

Ending drink specials is bad for Ames’ economy. Let’s just use Thursday night at Big Shots as an example. It is $5 for women and $6 for men. Big Shots has a capacity of 300 people. So let’s say that all-you-can-drink specials are banned.

That means that instead of five or six bucks a night, students are going to be spending an average of $15. There are always more women than men, so we’ll say 175 women and 125 men. That totals $1,625 with all-you-can-drink prices, $4,500 without.

That is $2,875 less that ISU students can spend at businesses in the Ames area, and that’s just one week. In a year that totals $149,000. That is a pretty large chunk of change.

I say to the Ames City Council, “Support drink specials, support Ames.”

Joel Porter

Senior

Sociology