'Games of Chance'

We are the first to admit it: Gambling can be bad. It is potentially addictive and destructive for the gambler, and as a visit to Las Vegas will reveal, its consequences in the community are considerable. But as for the "Casino Nights" in the Houses, dances with live jazz bands where students play blackjack with imaginary money for non-monetary prizes: Are these the latest sources of moral depravity in the City of Cambridge?

The Cambridge License Commission seems to think so. After Harvard officials noticed advertisements for two different Casino Nights events organized by Lowell and Quincy House Committees, both events had to be canceled due to a Cambridge city ordinance forbidding "games of chance." While the events may have been cleared if no money were involved, the admission fee charged to cover the events' cost doomed the Casino Nights to their place in the category of public evil and degradation.

We concede that it is the role of the License Commission to enforce existing city statues. But if the purpose of these statues is to maintain order in the City of Cambridge, then the cancellation of these events is misguided at best. The entire purpose of House Committees is to organize harmless social functions--the sort of functions, one might add, that could actually keep students from doing other things that the law has deemed evil, like purchasing alcohol before living for 21 years. Despite the occasional "Debauchery Dance," House Committee events could not possibly be more innocuous. In a city fighting a daily battle against crime, drugs and poverty, doesn't the Commission have better things to do with its time?

What is more disturbing than the License Commission's enforcement of the law, however, is its apparent belief that it can and should act as the arbiter of our collective moral worth. In a letter to The Crimson (published on January 9, 1998), Richard V. Scali, executive officer of the Cambridge License Commission, defended his organization's position on the Cops-in-Shops program in part by describing the untrustworthiness of anyone currently between the ages of 17 and 37. "The Millennium Generation," Scali wrote, "are those people born after 1982 and who present themselves as law-abiding and morally sound. The Gen-Xers, born between 1961 and 1981, are without such character and are the drinkers and drug addicted students of today." As members of the depraved generation described, we are naturally waiting with bated breath for those law-abiding and morally sound future members of the Class of 2004 to show up and steer us away from our evil temptations. Until then, we will have to live under the regime of our generational brethren from George Orwell's 1984.

And if "games of chance" are illegal in the City of Cambridge, we have another question for the License Commission. As patrons of a nine-month-long Cambridge casino with a $30,000 cover charge, we wonder: Where was the License Commission during the housing lottery?