Pueblog USa
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Something I Was Curious About
A Public Notice in the newspaper announced a hearing on a liquor license at the local university.
So I went to the web, found a phone number, and called up the State Liquor Enforcement office to find out what was going on.
A nice lady explained that the State was handling the license because the CSU-P is state-owned property and the local government (City of Pueblo) had decided to opt out of licensing liquor serving on state property. Which makes sense when you realize that includes the State Fair grounds and the local liquor board would be inundated every year with requests for special licenses, along with complaints from folks who didn’t get theirs because they didn’t apply in time. Anyway, she said she would have preferred to have had the hearing in Pueblo. It is scheduled for the state office in Lakewood.
Apparently someone wants to open a cafe on the campus, and serve alcohol.
Anyway, the nice lady explained the hearing process and said that the applicant would have to present a “need” for the liquor license in the neighborhood.
Let me think. A “need” for liquor on a college campus. Well, there’s calculus, macro economics, quantum physics…
Every subject matter has it’s killer course, usually placed in the sophomore year, after the student has become accustomed to the rigors of college work, but sometimes it’s later. In English, it was Generative-Transformational Grammar. Don’t ask. If you were majoring in English so you could write the great American novel, you didn’t have to take it. But if you were majoring in English so you could get a teaching certificate, you did.
Not to mention there’s always at least one prof who will drive you to drink, if the subject matter doesn’t. The G-T grammar prof fell in that category. Trouble was, if you went to the wrong bar, you’d find him, since he was also a jazz pianist. Same for one of the German profs, whose idea of experiencing German culture was drinking German beer.
And profs will tell you there’s always at least one student who will drive them to drink.
One of my profs told me about a foreign exchange student who showed up for the first class, but was not seen for the rest of the quarter. At the end of the term, the student showed up (“I could smell him before I turned the corner,” reported the prof) and proceeded to explain that she could not fail him, because he was a member of the Royal Family in some unpronounceable country, and it would cause an “international incident.” (The guy drove around campus in a sports car that was probably worth two years of a professor’s pay.) Since this was back in the days when students were supposed to EARN their degrees, not just pay for them, his tactic didn’t work.
Actually, I may have driven one or two of my profs to drink…
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