University students will have to wait a little later to hit the bars on Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day this year.

Campus bars will not be allowed to open until 11 a.m. on Unofficial this year in an attempt to curb binge drinking among University students, Deputy Liquor Commissioner Stephen Barnes said Friday.

“I believe Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day has been cause for more concern and public health problems than any other event,” Barnes said. “Last year we had binge drinking extremely early in the morning. (Keeping the bars closed until 11 a.m.) will definitely have an impact for the first part of the day and hopefully reduce the amount of binge drinking from last year.”

Champaign Mayor and Liquor Commissioner Gerald Schweighart passed down the decision in an effort to decrease the drunkenness of the festivities. Schweighart said that alcohol consumption resulted in 60 reported arrests during Unofficial last year.

The change in bar hours is the only step the city will take to curb drinking, Barnes said.

Dean of Students, Bill Riley said the University will make additional efforts to promote safety, including advertising to warn students about underage drinking, increasing deployment of security guards and requiring keycards to access residence halls.

“The University is taking this seriously and anticipates any number of actions to prevent problems,” Riley said.

Riley said University staff considered sending warning notices to other campuses to discourage students from coming for the event, but were worried about accidentally promoting it.

Police will increase their patrols on Unofficial, said Champaign Chief of Police R.T. Finney.

“We do put more officers out and increase the daily allotment because of some of the issues we’ve had in the past,” Finney said. “We put them in the areas that we anticipate problems, like any other busy time of the year.”

Barnes said local bars would be informed of the extent of the changes by Feb. 1. The exact area that will be affected by the decision has not been determined, but it is likely to be similar to the area covered by restrictions during the Final Four last March.

Scott Cochrane, manager of C.O. Daniel’s, 608 E. Daniel St., and owner of The Clybourne, 706 S. Sixth St., and Firehaus, 708 S. Sixth St., said the change was excessive.

“I think it’s tremendous overkill,” Cochrane said. “Each individual bar has to be responsible for what it does, and I think the city overreacts. Kids are having a good time, and 99 percent of the time kids are responsible and have fun. It’s that one percent that can’t handle the situation, and that’s just life. It’s not going to change.”

Joshua Reed, student representative to the Liquor Advisory Commission and graduate student, also disagreed with the new bar hours.

“It has been my position that the best way to get rid of binge drinking . is to try and get students into environments that are more controlled,” Reed said. “By reducing the amount of time that students can spend in bars, they’re just going to go to private parties instead.”

Reed said the city and University should have put more effort toward regulating and enforcing private parties instead of restricting access to the bars.

“This is a case that the bars are easy to regulate,” Reed said. “It’ll give the appearance of being concerned about a problem but not really solve anything.”

Reed also said he was concerned the city would eventually try to eliminate Unofficial, but Barnes said that would not be an issue.

“We don’t have any long-term goals to get rid of Unofficial,” Barnes said. “The only goal that we have is to reduce the public safety issues we’ve had in the past.”