Boss Hogg as ASU’s role model

Arkansas State University in Jonesboro handed over the highly lucrative right to sell alcohol in ASU’s First National Bank Basketball Arena, Centennial Football Stadium, Cooper Alumni Center, Fowler Center, Pavilion, and Tomlinson Baseball Center to a corporation called Cobblestone Good Guild (aka NEA Sports Club).

The annual fee paid by Cobblestone to ASU for the effective right to print money: $10. That’s cheaper than two beers at the game!

In return, Cobblestone raked in over $750,000 in pure profit—net revenue after taxes. That’s a return on investment of 1 million percent. In a real business, an ROI of 20 to 30 percent is considered great. But this situation is more surreal than real.

The private corporation Cobblestone is somehow located on ASU’s campus, at First National Bank Basketball Arena, the first swill-selling location listed above. That seems rather odd. Can I get space on ASU’s campus along with a sweetheart deal for $10 a year allowing me to sell all the hot dogs and pizza at the football games?

Considering that ASU’s Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Community Engagement proclaimed that ASU “must be intentional about creating a supportive environment … where everyone has equal access to resources and opportunities,” at least someone else—really, anyone—must’ve been included in the consideration for the sweetheart alcohol-selling contract, right? Was Cobblestone’s sawbuck really the highest bid?

Higher education’s alleged commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is all theater. While replacing blind merit with an ostentatious virtue-signaling pigment-and-plumbing palette is today’s “must have” bejeweled accessory on conspicuous display when praying to leftist secular gods—including anyone except a few good ol’ buddies in the golden opportunity to sell booze at all ASU sporting events, concerts, and fairs—well, that’s Apocrypha.

It reminds me of how often I’ve observed white leftist academics wail about the need to hire more minorities, but somehow only for future positions. Why not give up your privileged perch if pigment and plumbing are your priority? What makes you so special?

The ASU-Cobblestone contract says that all of ASU’s venues at which Cobblestone sells liquor “shall be used for the purpose of a private club.” So every game, concert, and fair at ASU are private-club events? But private clubs aren’t open to the public. In fact, they’re legally entitled to discriminate.

Does ASU have a list of members? Does it intend to keep non-members out?

ASU currently excludes gun owners with the highest concealed-carry license from its venues based solely on the Cobblestone contract.

While ASU agrees that normally it couldn’t prohibit Enhanced Concealed Carry Licensees (ECCLs) from bringing guns on campus pursuant to a statute titled Concealed Handguns in a University, ASU illegally relies on the Cobblestone contract to keep ECCLs out of its arenas.

ASU’s gun-rights-infringing argument goes like this:

■ ASU runs alcohol sales through a private entity housed on ASU’s campus.

■ That private entity gets all the profits (over $750,000 so far) from selling liquor on ASU’s campus in exchange for paying $10/year to ASU.

■ Because private entities serving alcohol are subject to Arkansas’ Alcohol Beverage Control Board regulations (which are not laws), ASU plastered its venues with permanent “no guns allowed” signs (which apply even when Cobblestone isn’t selling alcohol).

■ According to ASU, Arkansans’ gun rights—passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor—simply evaporate because ASU decided to contract with locals who sell swill to students.

This logic is entirely backwards. If a regulation requires no guns for liquor sellers, and the law guarantees ECCLs the right to carry at universities, then the booze peddlers are out—not licensed members of the general public. It’s as if ASU claims it could hire a convicted pedophile and then tell children they’re not allowed on campus because of the ex-con’s no-contact parole requirement.

I wonder what Dana Carvey’s Church Lady would say about all this. Certainly that ASU’s argument is all too convenient. Possibly something about the devilish influences of alcohol as well.

Years ago, the city of Fayetteville made an argument similar to ASU’s current bootstrapping position that its sweetheart liquor-sales deal cancels the statutory rights of hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding, gun-carrying citizens.

The city hired a private law firm to act as the city attorney. When a citizen made a FOIA request for city-attorney records, Fayetteville said: Oh, sorry, we contracted that function to a private entity, and they don’t have to respond to FOIA requests.

The Arkansas Supreme Court scoffed and held that the rights of Arkansans don’t disappear because government contracts out its functions.

But ordinary folks can’t afford to file a lawsuit to respond to actions such as those of the city of Fayetteville or ASU. So government bureaucrats rely on the reality that as long as they can string together a group of words— however absurd—as a justification for their rights-abusing behavior, the issue is over.

That’s why ASU’s attempts to contract around citizens’ gun rights represents just the tip of the infringement iceberg.

Universities routinely create socalled private foundations as cutouts in their fundraising operations to avoid various laws, including the Freedom of Information Act. ASU has just such a foundation.

A few years ago, ASU shut down a table set up to by an ASU student, Ashlyn Hoggard, to solicit members for Charlie Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, because Hoggard wasn’t in a “free-speech” zone. (I thought all of America is a freespeech zone.) So state Sen. Dan Sullivan penned a campus free-speech bill. ASU opposed the legislation. The bill passed anyway and serves as a national model.

Last session, Sullivan introduced a bill to modestly enhance his campus free-speech law by guaranteeing everyone—including conservatives— free speech inside campus facilities, where it’s most under attack. ASU again opposed. (See a pattern?)

The bill failed to get out of committee because of a former senator who since lost his seat to conservative stalwart John Payton. Let that be a lesson: if you’re a Republican and vote with Democrats on the Education Committee, watch out for that forthcoming primary challenger.

Sullivan brought back his enhanced campus free-speech bill, which will be up for a vote in the Education Committee shortly. Wanna bet whether ASU will oppose it—again? I’m sure they’ll find time to pop into the hearing from their balconied-penthouse offices overlooking the Capitol.

I didn’t much watch the 1980s cheesy TV comedy “the Dukes of Hazzard” when I was young. I thought the humor a bit trite, the Southern stereotypes a bit blatant, and the storyline about corrupt officials and moonshine a bit unrealistic. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve paid closer attention, because it seems some folks view Boss Hogg as a good role model.

This is your right to know.