Home for the holidays
When Melissa Downing heads home to Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving weekend, the first item on her agenda is to hit the city’s bar scene.

Although she wishes she could be heading to the East Lansing bars for one of the most popular bar nights of the year, the English senior said she’s excited to be able to spend time with her friends back home in a new setting.

“It’s my first Thanksgiving where I’m 21, and I’m excited to go home and spend time with friends,” Downing said. “Now (we) can just go and chill at the bar, relax and not have to worry about finding somewhere to go hang out.”

Chairman of MSU’s Department of Communication Charles Atkin said drinking on the day before Thanksgiving has been a long-standing tradition since he was a student in the 1960s, but said that kind of drinking rarely takes place in East Lansing now.

Atkin has worked on student alcohol prevention campaigns for 20 years, the most recent campaign being the MSU Social Norms Duck campaign. Atkin has done extensive research on drinking patterns, particularly among students.

For the most part, students are in a rush to go home rather than stay in East Lansing to drink, Atkin said.
“They disperse home to get together with old friends and drink, usually at a bar,” he said. “It requires way too much planning for people to organize a gathering at their residence on such short notice.”

Although this has been the trend as of late, East Lansing police Capt. Bill Mitchell said the day before Thanksgiving was, traditionally, a very popular party night in the city.

Mitchell said the day before Thanksgiving break, like the last day of finals, was seen as the “last hurrah” for students before going home, but during the past couple years, that trend somewhat has died off.

A local flavor
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is not the biggest bar night of the year for Dublin Square Irish Pub — game days typically take that title — but the bar has seen an increase in the number of people coming out for the festivities, Dublin Square server Nicole Raciboski said.

The bar, located at 327 Abbot Road, also plans to hold a Thanks4Giving event tonight, donating money collected from cover charge to local charities in honor of the upcoming holiday.

Raciboski said the bar sees a larger number of locals come in the night before Thanksgiving, as well as a larger mixture of younger and older patrons.

Human biology senior Brittney Benjamin plans to stay in the Lansing area until Thanksgiving Day, and will head to Lansing to participate in karaoke night at Leroy’s Classic Bar and Grill on Wednesday.

Staying in town for a night will give Benjamin the opportunity to spend time with her college friends before she heads Up North to celebrate the holiday with her grandparents, and she said her festivities won’t be focused around drinking.

“It’s more of us getting together and spending time together than drinking,” Benjamin said.

Rich McCarius, owner of Tom’s Party Store, 2778 E. Grand River Ave., said business at the liquor store picks up the day before Thanksgiving, but the nature of the alcohol sold tends to be classier than the average weekend in East Lansing.

“Thanksgiving holiday is pretty much a wine occasion,” McCarius said. “If people buy one bottle of wine a year, they’ll buy it for Thanksgiving.”

McCarius said the majority of the student crowd heads home for the weekend, and those buying alcohol before Thanksgiving typically are the locals or an older generation.

Because East Lansing is accustomed to a substantial part of its population drinking or partying on a regular basis, East Lansing police Capt. Kim Johnson said the department treats the Wednesday before Thanksgiving like a weekend during the school year.

Johnson said other communities might be busier the day before Thanksgiving, but in many ways, East Lansing gets a break as many students return home to visit with family.

But for the students that do stick around for the Wednesday before, the activity tends to be centered around downtown East Lansing rather than in the neighborhoods.

“The shift pretty much goes to the bars,” Johnson said.

Not without consequence
Drunk driving always is a priority for the East Lansing Police Department, Johnson said. But with the decreased number of people in the city, there are not as many drunk drivers as a typical football weekend or busy party night.

However, not all areas of the state are as fortunate.

Last year, there were 49 alcohol-related car crashes the night before Thanksgiving and nine fatal crashes causing 10 deaths between 6 p.m. Wednesday and midnight Sunday, Thanksgiving weekend, according to the Michigan State Police.

The Michigan State Police will be increasing their patrolling efforts tonight as part of Operation Combined Accident Reduction Effort, or CARE, a nationwide initiative to reduce the number of drunk drivers on the road.

The day before Thanksgiving last year, 159 alcohol-related arrests were made by the Michigan State Police, almost triple the average number of arrests made on Wednesdays in November, spokeswoman for the Office of Highway Safety Planning Lynn Sutfin said.

Although the likelihood of people drinking and driving increases with people drinking at bars and family gatherings, Sutfin said drunk drivers are not the only risk on the road.

“Crashes tend to go up on holidays because more people are on the road,” she said. “People are out and about, and the more people that are out and about, the more likely a crash will occur.”

But Atkin said despite the increased amount of drinking, drunk driving tends to decrease around holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Many people are cognizant of the increased police presence on the road and do not want to risk getting pulled over, he said.

Benjamin said she’s not too concerned about traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday, because to her, the overall idea of the weekend doesn’t revolve around drinking.

“Thanksgiving in particular is less of a drinking holiday and more of a family holiday,” Benjamin said.