To encourage students to maintain a high grade point average and to push the barriers of their academic development, the Honors Lounge has always provided several fine amenities, including free printing, tutoring sessions and occasionally, coffee and donuts.
However, to compete with the growing diversity of amenities offered at schools around the country, the Panini Honors College has decided to offer honors students access to a full open bar at the lounge, reports DrexelNOW, the propaganda paper at Drexel University.
The bar, operated by senior students in the culinary arts school, is complete with five rotating taps and a full selection of liquors and cocktails, many of which are brewed or distilled by Drexel Students. Needless to say, Bud Light is not on tap here.
Applications to the honors college have skyrocketed following this announcement. Students who were previously uninterested in academic achievement have been spotted in the library at all hours, trying to get that magical GPA number that allows them admittance to unlimited libations.
“An open bar, man? Of course I can maintain a 3.75 for that! Why didn’t they put this program in place ages ago?” sophomore John Jackson asked. He went on to say that he and all his friends had organized group study sessions and planned out their study time for the remainder of the term with Adderall-fueled Friday all-nighters, time they would otherwise have spent partying. Jackson reports the motivation provided by the potential of an open bar has been exactly what he’s always needed to achieve his academic potential.
Other students aren’t so enthusiastic. “An open bar is exactly the sort of thing which is causing moral decay and decadence in our student population,” Daniel Fink said. Fink is president of Dragons for Temperance, a student organization advocating teetotalism on campus. “What is really needed is a punitive system: students who do not achieve an honors-level GPA should be flogged quarterly, and placed in stocks for a minimum of two hours each week in the quad.”
Asked about his own status as an honors student, Fink refused to comment.
Drexel has been successful at keeping costs down. Director of the Honors Lounge Open Bar Program, Dr. Bob Robertson, has been keeping alcohol production in-house. “We serve beer brewed by students in the beer brewing course in the culinary arts program, and wine from the same. This allows us to keep quality high and have a wide selection of rotating taps. We still have five years to go before the distilling program produces results, but once that is in place, costs will be even lower!” Robertson said.
The success of the open bar program will depend on keeping costs down as use of the bar rises. Expansion of the beer brewing class is already planned, with a brewery capable of 250 gallon batches already on order and barley silos being installed in the Paul Peck Problem Solving Center, to fuel the demands of thirsty honors students.
“We hope this will be a model program for encouraging academic achievement in universities across the country,” said Robertson. “With the initiation of the open bar program, we have already seen a massive upswing in student achievement, and we believe it will spark a revolution in how schools can really motivate their students in the 21st century.”
Honors students making use of the bar were too inebriated to comment.
Specialty Cocktails on offer at the Honors Bar:
“The Shaft”
-4oz Bankers Club Vodka
-1 kick in the shin
Serve neat at room temperature in a highball glass. Drink in one gulp, then kick patron in the shin.
“Saved by the Curve”
-2oz 40 proof Southern Comfort
-1oz Wild Turkey 101
Shake and strain into a tumbler, making a 60.33 proof drink. Add ice and top off with soda water, representing the dilution of our academic standards.