For UCSD students, the week leading up to Sun God imposes a set of glorifiable preparatory rituals: For the underage, securing a willing older pal or a sufficiently convincing plastic card to provide liquid necessities (and a sly vessel to keep them at hand); for the of-age, merely collecting enough cash to keep cold beer in the keg.

Unsavory as gross recreational intoxication might outwardly seem, the students of this campus are ready witnesses to the miracles it can produce — temporarily creating a freewheeling social jungle that our collective ambition often sets out of bounds. The administration may hate it, and sternly deny it, but the squelching of inhibition is as essential to our end-of-the-year festival as the sculpture after which it’s named.

So year after year, it must be reiterated that the blindfolds worn by administrators like Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson regarding intoxication on Sun God only impair their worthy pursuit of personal safety. From a student perspective, the repeated rejection of a plan for a festival beer garden for of-age students only codifies that most unsafe Sun God tradition — the preconcert chug- or shot-fest. Offering beer in an isolated area of Sun God would relieve the pervasive pressure on of-age students to consume enough sauce to keep the party going all night, an urge both legally sanctioned and singularly pursued (Watson, cease your dreams of its disappearance).

No change in administrators’ attitude toward Sun God drinking has produced a palpable change in behavior — not because student habits won’t change, but because the administration refuses to see Sun God through student eyes. This willful blindness, rather than the consumption of a few beers at a well-earned concert, presents the greatest safety risk of UCSD’s great tradition.