On Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day this year, there will be no “WARNING” tickets issued. There will be a massive police presence on campus and in campus-area neighborhoods, and, if previous years are an indicator, there will be zero tolerance for anything that violates or appears to violate the law.

This year is different as the police may be poised to cite celebrants under state statutes for matters that are usually dealt with as relatively minor city offenses. Underage possession of alcohol, consumption of alcohol, fake ID, disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct are all misdemeanors under state statutes that can involve being processed at the Champaign County Jail, which means fingerprints and the potential of a permanent criminal record.

Being convicted of any alcohol offense will cause a driver’s license to be suspended for three months even if court supervision is allowed. Without court supervision, it is a one year suspension. Finding a summer job, let alone a permanent job, without a valid license is difficult to impossible.

Even for first-time offenders who receive court supervision, their records cannot be expunged until two years after completion of the sentence. In the meantime, the “arrest” record is out there for the entire world to see, including a future employer.

Expungement does not cure the fact that there WAS an arrest or conviction as the various private services that mine for such information obtain it for their records, and a future employer likely uses one of these private services. The private agencies that get this information are often off-shore and therefore not subject to U.S. law, let alone Illinois expungement rules.

Sixty percent of all employers admit that they check out job applicants on Facebook. Ah, but you have maximum privacy settings so you are safe. Think again. Ever heard of Wikileaks? If hackers can breach Pentagon and State Department files, and they did so fairly easily according to published accounts, then your privacy setting is really not much of a protection. Remember those off-shore record search companies I talked about?

There is no law protecting your Facebook embarrassments from being used by employers. One would hope that most employers would write it off to youthful indiscretion, but in a fiercely competitive job market, a background check is an easy way to eliminate a person from the job pool at a cheap cost.

In the post-9/11 employment landscape, thorough background checks are universal. There are potentially huge career consequences to having way too good of a time on Unofficial. That mug of beer at age 19 can mug your future career!

_Thomas E. Betz, director of Student Legal Service_