Tuesday night, the Champaign City Council is scheduled to vote on a proposal that would give “emergency” powers to Liquor Commissioner and Champaign Mayor Jerry Schweighart. Chief among them would be the ability to raise the bar entry age to 21 and restrict keg sales for at least 48 hours whenever the commissioner has a “reasonable belief” there will be civil unrest based on past experience.

We believe this is a direct response to Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, despite how little civil unrest there was this year. True, some bars did voluntarily raise their entry age to 21 to help curtail underage drinking but part of that success was doing so unexpectedly, sometimes in the middle of the day. That meant revelers didn’t have time to make other plans.

Should the mayor announce that he is invoking these “emergency” powers before Unofficial, you can bet word will travel fast. That will only drive those choosing to celebrate into houses and apartments and lead to empty shelves at local retailers.

For years now, the justification for having the bar entry age at 19 in Champaign is that students (who will invariably drink anyway) would be in a controlled environment, providing them some level of safety. Frankly, it would be hypocritical for the Council to grant the commissioner the power to totally suspend that logic whenever he felt like it. After all, if officials believe this campus has an alcohol problem, then logically, it must have one the other 364 days.

The answer, Mayor Schweighart reasons, is the use of undercover officers to infiltrate private parties that will inevitably ensue. Of course, the fact that party hosts will go to extreme lengths to screen guests to avoid a mole will do nothing to improve the relationship between the student body and the police, let alone local government.

That relationship appears not to be very important anymore. Consider the Liquor Advisory Commission met during the University’s spring break (for the first time since January) and didn’t even give information about the meeting to Justin Randall, the lone student representative on the commission, until after he had left the area.

Councilman Michael La Due, whose district includes part of Campustown, calls the powers “unnecessary.” We’ll go further than that.

This measure will lead to more hostility in this community. We cautioned last week about the lessons that can be learned from the MSU Cedarfest party debacle. This proposal will make such a thing more likely in the future. And eventually, it will make the years-long cat-and-mouse game the city has been playing with alcohol a deadly one.