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Universities may report drinking tickets to Bradley

Students who receive drinking tickets at other universities may face penalties of the Comprehensive Alcohol Action Plan if the university chooses to report the ticket to Bradley.
“If the incident takes place at U of I or Western [Illinois University], they let us know about the incident,” said Nathan Thomas, executive director of residential living and leadership. “So they wouldn’t get per say another ticket, but we have the right to do things with the university through the student judicial system.”
Students who receive their first drinking ticket at another campus are fined the cost of that city’s drinking ticket, the $50 Bradley fine and are also forced to undergo the alcohol education program E-Chug.
Students who have previously received drinking tickets face the penalties outlined in the Alcohol Plan for subsequent offenses, Thomas said.
“Our standards of conduct say we deal with students on or off campus,” he said. “Some of it is respect to other schools. Part of what the student judicial system does is protect the integrity of the Bradley degree.”
Thomas said he is only contacted a couple times a year by other universities’ administration to report tickets, and most students are surprised when he calls them and says he knows about the incidents.
He said he also contacts schools when students from other universities receive drinking tickets at Bradley, but it isn’t very common because “we don’t have a big event like Unofficial where students flock to campus.”
Patrol Division Commander for the University of Illinois Police Department Lt. Skip Frost said around 350 drinking tickets were given out at Unofficial this year for $300 each. He said he estimates around 35 percent ticketed were U of I students.
“We had 52 colleges, two high schools and 12 different states represented for violations,” he said. “Usually they always tell us [what school they go to], but it makes it real simple for us, because if they don’t want to cooperate we can easily arrest them and have them charged criminally.”
Frost said the Dean of Students chooses which tickets to report to universities based on the offenses they were for.
“Some of them are underage consumption, some of them are possession on public way and some of them have to do with offenses such as public urination,” he said. “I’m not saying we call every college to notify them, and not every school will punish the students. It’s based on what their student code says.”
At Bradley, students’ guests do not face penalties from the Alcohol Plan, but the students may face punishments if their guests get in trouble, he said.
“Our standards of conduct say you’re responsible for your guest,” Thomas said. “There are definitely things that happen here where guests are involved, and this ranges.”
Tickets received for non-alcohol related reasons may also be reported from university to university, and punishments are also based on the student judicial system, he said.
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