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Students wait outside Raider Bar and Grill on Broadway to watch the Tech vs. Texas men's basketball game and enjoy a few drinks on Feb. 1, 2022.
Students wait outside Raider Bar and Grill on Broadway to watch the Tech vs. Texas men's basketball game and enjoy a few drinks on Feb. 1, 2022.
Gathering with friends and going out for drinks is a common practice amongst college students, resulting in lively bar scenes at many of the local hangout spots. However, with students being under the influence, it can be difficult to engage in safe bar practices.
For many students, being in bar settings makes them worry about spiked drinks and interacting with students under the influence.
For third-year Bruno Lara, an environmental engineering student from Eagle Pass, social anxiety is a common feeling because of large crowds.
“There’s been moments where people are around me that I don’t really trust or feel safe around, so I usually just tell my friends ‘hey, I don’t feel good being here’ so can we just leave or go to a different table, and then we continue what we were doing,” Lara said.
Local bars assist in enforcing safety as well. General manager of the BierHaus, Kolby Dodson, said the staff members at the bar are trained to check IDs, look for signs of intoxication and mitigate any issues that can arise with individuals who are under the influence.
A staff member at The Library, Cameron Criado, said their safety practices are similar.
“We started cracking down more on just checking ID’s,” Criado said. “We are trying to be around the bar as much as possible, and just have our security just walking around checking for Xs or bands, and looking to make sure there’s no fights. We do restroom checks every 15 minutes to make sure no one is doing anything in the bathroom.”
While there are procedures that encourage and enforce bar safety, sometimes additional help is required. Amy Ivey, captain of the Texas Tech Police Department, said many individuals have the misconception that the police are there to look at the underage drinking. In reality, the officers are always there to help and put the safety of the individual first.
“A lot of the time, we’ll see intoxicated individuals walk from the bar back to campus, so that kind of puts them into a public place that can be dangerous to themselves or others,” Ivey said. “They can be charged with public intoxication, or just in general being in danger just by walking across the street, walking alone, intoxicated, not knowing what is going on around you. That’s a lot of issues we see here on the Texas Tech campus. It is going to the bar and having too much to drink and then trying to get back to campus whether it is walking by yourself or with friends, that puts everybody in a dangerous situation.”
Students often recommend going to bars with groups, and never leaving a drink unattended. Hunter Moore, a creative media industries fourth-year student from The Colony, said the safest bar for him is Rodeo 4 because it takes its bar safety seriously.
“It really is important to practice bar safety because you never know how bad a situation is until you are in it, or it is around you,” Moore said. “You see people every year losing their lives, it is just important to understand bar safety is there for that exact reason: to keep you safe, not just for you but for everybody.”
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