CMU has provided many activities for students the past few years. But with those activities dying down in the early night and Grand Junction not providing much entertainment for underage students, an interesting statistic jumps out. According to the OPE Campus Security Statistics website, CMU had 318 on-campus liquor law violations last year.

That doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but compare it to other campuses around the country and you will be shocked. The University of Florida, normally cosidered a top party school, only had 200. That’s right, a campus with thousands less students had more violations. If you compare that to schools in our region, it’s a lot higher. Adams State had 122 violations, Fort Lewis had 174 and Western State Colorado University only had 93 violations.

So what exactly does that mean, and why do we have so many? First of all, let’s give Officer Pua Utu a big pat on the back. He and the other campus officers do a great job making sure we walk on a safe campus. And they are doing a good job catching the people in violation.

The other factor that goes into the arrests is that Grand Junction just doesn’t provide as much entertainment as Gainsville or Athens, Ga. Those are bigger cities with much more to do. Grand Junction is a small town that shuts down at 9 p.m. In fact, the only thing there really is to do for underage students is to go to an 18-and-up club, otherwise they stay on campus, where the thrill of drinking illegally is high.

We aren’t here to say that CMU is full of drunks or bad people. Everyone knows what happens in college. Maybe we are just the most unlucky school with how much we get caught or we go to such a safe school that it’s hard to get away with anything. The numbers are interesting to look at and show that students should find better ways to spend nights on campus.