On Tuesday, my band had the honor of playing the headline act for the Earth Day Benefit at People’s Bar and Grill, sponsored by the Student Environmental Council (SEC).

The turnout was rather poor, but I learned two valuable things. Hippies make great cookies, and the environment is not a high priority among Iowa State students.

This isn’t a reprimand. The event was not highly publicized, so the SEC and People’s bear some of the responsibility for the low attendance. In addition, most of the regular fans of our band didn’t even show up, so there were obviously other factors at work.

It was, after all, a school night.

However, I still have to gripe. With a few exceptions, the people who were there didn’t seem to be there for environmental reasons.

The main problem was the way the event was organized. It was “all-ages.” Is this an ugly word? It means that no alcohol was served. This probably wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the bar, Lumpy’s, underneath People’s, was serving alcohol. You don’t even have to go outside to get there. As a result, many of the people at People’s were beckoned by the scent of inebriate down to Lumpy’s, never to be seen again.

What we had upstairs was basically a juice bar without the naked women.

So apparently alcohol consumption is more important than the environment to a lot of students.

I am not being judgmental. This is perfectly reasonable behavior. It is much easier to reap the immediate benefits of alcohol consumption, but more difficult to see the long term benefits of protecting the earth.

Studies show that people in post-industrial nations, such as our own, are accustomed to a hedonic lifestyle. If you want to sell environmental protection to college students, just make sure there are plenty of kegs.

My suggestion for future Earth Days is that they should have lots of beer, hooters and free stuff. They’ll pack the place. Of course, a few minor university regulations would need to be changed.

On an up note, though, this Earth Day I got to meet some cool folks from the SEC. I got to play music sober in a room without a lot of life-threatening smoke. And best of all, Mother Nature is a great lap dancer.