Spring Break
Students, bars disagree on entry rules
By: Travis Measley
Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: News
On the night of March 30, an international Ph.D. student and her boyfriend entered Hookah Station.
"It was crowded, so my boyfriend sat down at an open place at the bar and turned to ask me if I wanted a drink," she said.
The graduate student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that no more than 30 seconds after her boyfriend sat down, one of the bartenders grabbed him by the shoulders and told him that if he wasn't going to order a drink, he needed to "get the f*** out of here."
"We didn't want any trouble, so we left the bar and went to Logan's (another bar on Northgate)," the student said. "I was enraged, but I did not think of the incident in terms of race until we were walking by later on our way home. There were probably eight or ten Indian students standing outside the bar after all being thrown out for apparently no reason."
MJ Gerhard, an employee at Hookah Station, said diverse groups of people come to the club each night.
"To assume that this is an issue of race is a sad jump to an easy solution, when what we really have here is a case of misunderstanding between drunk customers and sober employees," Gerhard said.
Allegations of discrimination at Northgate bars are not a new phenomenon. In 2005, a student task force was formed to increase safety and prevent alleged discrimination on Northgate. Student leaders met with representatives of Northgate bars asking the representatives to change their entry policies to avoid discrimination.
Patrick Lukingbeal, a graduate student and former member of the task force, said even though the organization received various accounts of students who claimed they were being discriminated against, there was nothing the task force could do to prove any discrimination took place.
"Without physical, tangible proof, we could not file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and we could not file a complaint against the bars," Lukingbeal said. "We didn't give up. There was just nothing we could do at the time."
"It was crowded, so my boyfriend sat down at an open place at the bar and turned to ask me if I wanted a drink," she said.
The graduate student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that no more than 30 seconds after her boyfriend sat down, one of the bartenders grabbed him by the shoulders and told him that if he wasn't going to order a drink, he needed to "get the f*** out of here."
"We didn't want any trouble, so we left the bar and went to Logan's (another bar on Northgate)," the student said. "I was enraged, but I did not think of the incident in terms of race until we were walking by later on our way home. There were probably eight or ten Indian students standing outside the bar after all being thrown out for apparently no reason."
MJ Gerhard, an employee at Hookah Station, said diverse groups of people come to the club each night.
"To assume that this is an issue of race is a sad jump to an easy solution, when what we really have here is a case of misunderstanding between drunk customers and sober employees," Gerhard said.
Allegations of discrimination at Northgate bars are not a new phenomenon. In 2005, a student task force was formed to increase safety and prevent alleged discrimination on Northgate. Student leaders met with representatives of Northgate bars asking the representatives to change their entry policies to avoid discrimination.
Patrick Lukingbeal, a graduate student and former member of the task force, said even though the organization received various accounts of students who claimed they were being discriminated against, there was nothing the task force could do to prove any discrimination took place.
"Without physical, tangible proof, we could not file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and we could not file a complaint against the bars," Lukingbeal said. "We didn't give up. There was just nothing we could do at the time."
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