Beer Bike parade to include increased RUPD presence

By Seth Brown     3/11/10 6:00pm

While some colleges are prepping for Beer Bike by filling up water balloons and practicing their chugging, a select few individuals are focusing on ensuring the parade is a safe environment. Although the Beer Bike Parade has kept its trucks and water balloon fight, there will be several other format changes this year. The parade will follow the Inner Loop past the north colleges, in the opposite direction as in the past, due to construction at the south colleges, and will feature an increased security presence.

Assistant Dean of Students Boyd Beckwith said the increased presence of Rice University Police Department officers during the race is due to safety concerns that arose in previous years.

"In the past, students were having to handle other students with abusive behaviors," Beckwith said. "RUPD has to defeuse those kinds of situations. I think it'll make it easier for us to have a safer parade."

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Beer Bike Coordinator Brian Henderson said the officers would not conduct sobriety testing, but rather would deal with individuals who endanger the safety of the event, ensuring that students did not harm themselves on the new James Surls sculptures (see story, page 1).

"We're trying to increase the overall effectiveness of event safety to ensure that no one is impaled on the sculptures," Henderson, a Jones College senior, said. "The average student probably will not notice the added police presence."

RUPD Major Dianna Marshall said there will be about 20 officers along the route who will pull out students in violation of parade rules. A supervisor on a golf cart will then record the name of the student and take their picture. Marshall said she hoped this would make it possible for fines to be incurred against individuals instead of against colleges, as has been the case in the past.

"What we're concerned about is safety, and we'll focus on violations that promptly address safety," Marshall said. "I don't foresee any arrests being made, but [if] the person concerned makes poor judgment decisions, that puts a different shade on it."

Henderson said each college will decide the way to deal with incurred fines. Fines go to the colleges and not individuals, but some colleges may instead choose to handle individuals in violation through their own court systems.

Lovett College sophomore Lynn Pauls said although she understood how the installment of additional officers along the parade route would make the event more secure, she thought this decision was not in the spirit of Beer Bike.

"The whole point is for the craziness and freedom," Pauls said. "There's going to be a distinct change of behavior."

Some colleges face logistical problems of their own. Although each college has reserved a truck, and some have even reserved back-ups, a number of recent cancellations by rental companies may force an alternative method of balloon transport for some colleges, should they be unable to use the usual 22-24-foot trucks. Henderson said though no plans have been made, in the event that too few 22-24-foot trucks can be procured, the impacted colleges might be allowed to use two 11-12-foot trucks instead, as long as they can provide two drivers.

"The college Beer Bike coordinators will do whatever necessary to ensure that their college has a truck for the parade," Henderson said.

For Lovett senior Sijuola Odumabo, the balloon fight is the best part of the day's events.

"I really only look forward to the balloon fights, even though last time I got smashed in the face and lost my glasses," Odumabo said.

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