Alcohol Licensing Committee to Add Student Voter in Wisconsin

Madison, Wis., is known as a great college town that treats University of Wisconsin students as citizens of the city and part of community. And now, students will have a voice—and a vote—on the city's Alcohol Licensing Review Committee, reports the Badger Herald.

The committee currently has a nonvoting student member who was appointed by the University of Wisconsin's Association of Students of Madison. But Alderman Bryon Eagon pushed for a change in the committee's makeup, wanting to eliminate the nonvoting position in favor of a voting position held by a student from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Area Technical College, or Edgewood College, according to the Capital Times, Madison's daily newspaper.

The Badger Herald report says that there was some concern among committee members that a student under the legal drinking age of 21 could vote with the panel. Current Madison law allows anyone 18 or older to serve on the City Council and its committees.

"We are assuming that they're going to be breaking the law," Alderman Judy Compton tells the Badger Herald. "That is the wrong thing for us as lawmakers to do."

In contrast, Eagon told the Badger Herald that having an underage student "would bring a unique prospective due to their underage status."

Either way, committee members agreed, it's important to have on the board a college student living in Madison.

"I'm always amazed by the amount of great input and insight that [the students] have," one committee member says. "I am looking forward to seeing the change that this could make to the discussions in the ALRC."

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