EVANSTON, IL — A member of the Evanston City Council is proposing a ban on beer pong and any other video games that require alcohol when in view of neighbors or passersby.

Ald. Judy Fiske, whose 1st Ward surrounds the campus of Northwestern University, placed a discussion of an ordinance banning beer pong on the agenda of Monday’s Human Support Committee assembly.

“There have been grievances about Evanston people enjoying beer pong and other game titles involving liquor usage in their entrance yards in comprehensive see of their neighbors and the general public way,” in accordance to a memo from Assistant Metropolis Legal professional Brian George, who declined by way of a spokesperson to offer any obtainable facts about the variety or areas of such issues.

Fiske endorses the Metropolis Council critique the municipal code of the borough of Belmar, New Jersey and take into account applying it as a “attainable template” for a very similar prohibition in Evanston, in accordance to George’s memo.

The Belmar ordinance forbids any “video game or contest that entails as an element of the said video game or contest the use or use of an alcohol beverage” if it can be viewed from streets, sidewalks or neighboring qualities. The ban includes front yards, aspect yards, porches and decks.

Less than Evanston Town Code, the use of liquor in community properties, parks, shorelines, highways, streets, alleys, sidewalks, parkways and community parking lots is forbidden unless of course exclusively permitted by the city.

In parks, on seashores and in public structures, even the possession of sealed liquor containers is prohibited. It is also illegal for pedestrians be intoxicated on streets or sidewalks if it “renders himself/herself a hazard.” But Fiske’s proposed beer pong ban would be the first to control non-commercial alcoholic beverages intake by adults on personal residence.

A model of beer pong involving paddles reportedly originated at fraternities at Dartmouth College in the 1950s. The two Bucknell and Lehigh universities in Pennsylvania assert the paddle-considerably less version — also acknowledged as “toss pong” and “Beirut” — was invented at their colleges. The 15th annual Globe Series of Beer Pong was postponed earlier this yr thanks to the coronavirus.

Fiske has confronted criticism from Northwestern college students in the previous for her assistance of the city’s so-known as “brothel law” or “three-unrelated rule.” The ordinance can make it technically illegal for 3 non-spouse and children users to dwell in one particular housing device, and tenants have alleged it contributes to unaffordable rents and exploitation by unscrupulous landlords.

Fiske did not right away answer to concerns about her proposal Monday, like how several complaints she experienced fielded from constituents and irrespective of whether she envisioned Evanston law enforcement enforcing the beer pong ban. Any response obtained will be added listed here.

This write-up at first appeared on the Evanston Patch