Campus Quarters Sports Bar owner Joe Kostelnik hasn’t had to worry too much about underage drinking at his bar but that may change this fall.

The bar, which frequently holds a 21 year-and-older policy, will adopt a Sunday-only 18-and-older policy when students come in to watch football games.

While Kostelnik has hosted football Sundays for years, this will be the first time underage patrons can participate.

“We tend to not really have the rowdier crowds that the downtown bars have,” Kostelnik said. “We get a lot of grad students, a lot of students that are done going downtown and stuff like that.”

Kostelnik said the bar will have to increase its effort to catch underage drinkers, especially those with fake IDs.

“We’ll have to staff accordingly,” Kostelnik said. “As long as we stay on top of it, I don’t foresee any problems. We’ve always had a good reputation for doing so.”

Maintaining a good reputation with the police as well as the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Liquor Control is important to running a bar in the city, particularly when it comes to underage drinking.

Sanctions are leveled against the bartender who is caught making an illegal sale, but the bar can get in trouble if it develops a history, Kostelnik said.

Lieutenant Tony Hetrick of the Bowling Green Police Division said the sale of alcohol to an underage person is a first degree misdemeanor that can result in a fine (which varies with every case) against the bartender as well as the bar. The bar can also lose its license to sell liquor for serving an underage person.

The fine can reach $500 with a possible 60-day jail sentence, according to the Liquor Control Division’s handbook.

“We’ve had investigations that have resulted in revocations of licenses for several days to two weeks in Bowling Green,” Hetrick said.

Eric Pelham, co-owner of City Tap and The Attic, said the larger size of his bar, which also has a daytime restaurant on the same liquor license, adds to the pressure.

“I feel like we have a lot more to lose just based on the capacity of the place,” Pelham said. “If we get in trouble by serving underagers at night and we lost our liquor license … it would cost us more than just our nightclub upstairs, it would cost us our restaurant as well.”

Campus Quarters, City Tap and Uptown/Downtown place a high value on the quality of their staff to catch underage drinkers, all of which have 21-and-over establishments with the latter two having 18-and-over upstairs establishments.

Both City Tap and Downtown Sports Bar check IDs at the door, and each of them employ wristbands for 21-year-olds who go upstairs to dance.

“Underagers will get stamped, no wristband, they’ll get marks,” Pelham said. “Marks that could be washed off their hands, but at the same time, they still don’t have that wristband and the bartenders are trained to check for a wristband before they sell alcohol to somebody.”

Pelham said that problems sometimes arise with people exchanging wristbands, but the wristbands are meant to last only once before being ripped off the hand.

“You get people trying to tape them back together with gum, tape, something like that,” Pelham said. “Bartenders are checking to make sure they don’t look suspect.”

While reporting underage activity is encouraged (but not required) by the police, Pelham said the bar usually sticks with refusal of service.

“As a business owner, it’s not our place to get involved in that,” Pelham said. “Once they’re here, it’s not our job to police if they’re already intoxicated.”

It is illegal to sell alcohol to an intoxicated person in Ohio, and Pelham said the bar denies sales based on this. He said it is the responsibility of the bar to make sure behavior does not get out of hand. The repercussions of this can be redirected toward the bar even if the offender did not consume any alcohol at the establishment.

However, Pelham said the underage crowd adds to the atmosphere of The Attic and provides business with a cover charge. Pelham enjoys his business in spite of the potential problems that can arise with rowdy drinkers.

“Every person is a different drunk than the person before, you have to be ready for everything,” Pelham said. “That’s not just underagers, that’s everybody with alcohol.”