Google “debate drinking game” and you’ll get about 36 million results. For instance, the semi-official DebateDrinking.com has a set of rules for the 2019/2020 presidential election debates. Google “town meeting drinking game” though, and you get far fewer results. There are a couple of pieces on local politics related drinking games, like this one for the Charleston, South Carolina City Council meeting. But nothing specific for that New England classic: the town meeting.
So maybe it’s time to think up some rules for when to drink at town meeting, given that the town of Dartmouth is holding our fall town meeting this evening. I mean – it’s at night, it’s probably going to take a long time, and I could use some distraction to entertain myself while we talk about things like zoning regulations, marijuana grow facilities, and capital projects.1
For some background, Dartmouth actually has a representative town meeting, so the folks who show up at these things have put their names in to serve as an elected representative at town meeting. In other words, these folks didn’t just decide to show up at the last minute; they had to throw their name in the ring at least several months ago. In representative town meeting, any town resident may show up to participate, but only elected representatives may vote. For those of you unfamiliar with town meeting in general, here’s an overview of how town meeting is supposed to work.
Rules for politically related drinking games generally entail identifying the things that happen requiring participants to drink, so here’s my go at a list for town meeting.
Town meetings can be long and boring affairs, except for the few issues that fire everyone up. Usually you can identify which issues those will be in advance (hello marijuana grow facility zoning regulations), but there’s always a wild card. So to start, identify the three issues that you think will generate the most debate. If there’s no debate on one of your issues, chug your drink.
As you move through the agenda for the evening, take a drink when:
- You hear someone rip open the envelope containing the warrant that the town mailed to everyone a week or so ago, indicating they haven’t even looked at it yet
- Someone says: “we’ve always done it this way” or “I remember when”
- The person making a comment or asking a question has asked more than one question
Shots are generally doled out much more rarely, so how about you do a shot when:
- Someone younger than 25 is an elected town meeting representative
- Town meeting votes against the recommendation of the Finance Committee on an warrant item (in the decade plus that I have attended these meetings, FinCom typically gets rolled once, sometimes doesn’t get rolled at all, but almost never gets rolled twice or more)
- Someone asks a question that other elected or appointed officials (FinCom, the Select Board, A School Committee, etc.) genuinely hasn’t considered yet
All joking aside, attending a town meeting often leaves me wondering—is this really the way we do things? I know town meeting is a New England tradition with deep historical roots, but my own experience suggests that town meeting generally follows the guidance of those officials who volunteer lots of time and effort investigating the issues that make it to the warrant and when it doesn’t, it’s not entirely clear that town meeting understands the ramifications of those decisions (the number of unused, historical, town-owned buildings in Dartmouth is an example of this).
To me then, the value added by town meeting is not clear. I’d love to hear stories from others proving me wrong—demonstrating the wisdom of town meeting against the conventional wisdom of appointed and elected officials. David standing up to Goliath. And of course, I’d also love to hear some additional drinking rules; after all, it’s Tuesday night and I’ve got several hours in an uncomfortable school auditorium chair to kill.
1: To be clear, it’s probably not legal to bring alcohol into a local school, and I am not actually going to do this, but it’s fun to think about!