While students are busy planning their night out, the Champaign Police Department is planning its next round of bar checks.

About 20 bar checks are conducted each academic year at popular campus locations such as Kam’s, Murphy’s Pub, Legend’s and The Clybourne. Most recently, 32 students were issued citations for illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor on Jan. 29.

Sgt. Scott Friedlein of the Champaign Police Department said these operations are not meant to affect a large portion of the student body.

“We’ve got 40-plus thousand students at the University of Illinois. This program’s not going to reach out and touch every one of them,” Friedlein said. “It’s designed around creating a level of risk so that when students do decide to go out and engage in behavior that they at least have that thought process in mind.”

Operation Campus/TAP (Teen Alcohol Party), a program designed to prevent underage drinking, has been around since the late 1990s. When the program was first established, the violent crime rate on campus dropped about 70 percent.

Since then, the crime rate has remained relatively constant, according to Friedlein.

“I go back, and I look at what we were like 15 years ago and the amount of violence. I think you can say, clearly, we have made some good strides for the safety of students,” Friedlein said.

In addition, the police reach out and offer educational programs to students, especially to higher risk groups, such as the Greek organizations and the athletic department, Friedlein added.

Disciplinary action for some offenders can also turn into an educational experience. Students, who are disciplined by the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, may be required to take e-CHUG, an interactive web survey, and submit a response paper afterwards.

Teresa Weik, senior in LAS, said the ultimate responsibility falls on the students, not the bars.

“I feel that the students that go out with the mindset that they want to abuse alcohol in that way do so even before they get to the bars,” Weik said. “People need to take their own responsibility for themselves.”

With the prevalence of illegal alcohol consumption over the last decade, other Illinois universities have also implemented the program. Notable universities include Bradley, Illinois State and Western Illinois universities.

In Champaign, the University Police assists the Champaign Police Department on select details, but alcohol control is not its area of concentration.

“We do alcohol enforcement, but that is not our focus. We’ve got enough on our plate,” Lt. Skip Frost said.

“For the year, last year, we wrote fewer than 150 underage drinking citations. That’s three a week for 40,000 students,” he added.

When asked about the goal for Operation Campus/TAP, Friedlein said Champaign police do not necessarily focus on handing out city notices.

“Our ultimate goal is not to make kids’ lives miserable by giving them a ticket. Our ultimate goal is to make our campus as safe as possible and help our students survive,” Friedlein said.