SDBOR holds off on alcohol sales legislation

The South Dakota Board of Regents is moving forward with plans to explore the possibility of selling beer and wine on public university campuses during certain events, but is easing back its ambitions to present the plans to state legislators at the upcoming legislative session beginning next month.

Janelle Toman, director of communications for the SDBOR, is chair of the Alcohol Sales Task Force committee and presented the committee’s research progress to the Regents at their meeting last week in Aberdeen, S.D.

“The report we delivered… was what information we could give them given the limited amount of time we had from October until now,” Toman said. “It became somewhat evident as we went along that while we made some great progress in identifying issues and how to narrow our scope of work, that we still have much more to do if we were to go forward to the Legislature with a specific request for a change in state law.”

South Dakota law currently prohibits any alcohol being sold on any of the six public universities around the state. One of the biggest challenges faced by the task force is drafting legislation.

“I did hear the Board tell us that they are really not at all interested in just a general outright appeal and leaving things wide open so that it could be made available broadly across campus,” Toman said. “They tend to be in agreement with the task force that we should look at a more narrow set of circumstances.”

Those circumstances, however, appear to be wide ranging among each university, according to the report.

For example, USD and South Dakota State University have expressed interest in moving forward with some sort of legislation to allow alcohol sales at certain events such as football games and event-specific activities. One of the driving forces behind this idea is the amount of possible revenue the sales could generate for the schools.

On the other side of the spectrum, Northern State University has stated it does not wish to pursue selling alcohol at NSU events at this time, but wouldn’t oppose other institutions pursuing some form of alcohol sales.

Black Hills State University and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology are unsure of where they stand on the topic.

Made up of representatives from all six universities, one thing all members of the task force can agree on is that an outright appeal of the campus prohibition law is not something they want to pursue.

USD President James Abbott said moving forward shouldn’t be rushed, and added he’s glad the Regents decided against drafting some kind of legislation to present at the upcoming legislative session.

“We know that alcohol is a problem with a number of students,” he said. “We know that binge drinking is a problem. So (is) allowing the purchase of alcohol at various events a good thing or bad thing? That’s the question.”

Abbott said he’s “conflicted” about the sale of alcohol on campus because there is so much to consider regarding the issue.

“We need to move forward and talk about not only if it’s a good idea at the DakotaDome or the arena, but all over campus,” Abbott said. “I think everyone agrees selling beer at the student union would be a bad idea. There’s a fair number of things to consider.”

The Regents asked the task force to continue its research of other universities that allow some form of alcohol sales on campus, as well as to research legislative policies. Additionally, the task force was asked to draft a list of possible menu of alcohol options that could be distributed for campus and general public input.

“They asked us to continue to develop plans and narrow the scope of the project to a more limited set of circumstances where alcohol sales might be appropriate,” Toman said. “Before they would decide to advance those to the Legislature for their consideration, they asked us to give them a menu of options and make sure those were distributed widely among the campuses and among the general public so that we could get input and comment about how people felt about it.”

The idea is that by the time the 2017 South Dakota Legislative session arrives, the Regents will be ready to present a bill outlining their vision.

“The devil is always in the very minute details, so the challenge for us will be how to identify a way to narrow the topic,” Toman said. “It’s not impossible, but it’s going to take some legal work and some drafting work to get those options available to us.”