“You’re going to eliminate the one thing we like to do most.”

The young lady speaking the words stood before the city government of Mankato last week, arguing eloquently and passionately against the grievous wrong she hoped to halt.

She was among a standing-room-only crowd of young residents participating in their constitutionally given right to redress grievances and keep their all-you-can-drink bar specials.

The issue before the council was drinking, more specifically heavy drinking. The council plans a mostly symbolic stand against it by ordering an end to all-you-can-drink specials at local bars.

Slowing drunkenness among college-age kids is an oft-revisited topic in Mankato. The only issues more often agonized over are what we can do about the ugly flood walls and where to put the Mankato Piece sculpture.

Mankato has long had a party school label, although there is nothing to indicate the social activities here are any different than any mid-size city with 15,000 college students.

There is even an urban legend that MSU was ranked in the Top 10 Party Schools list of Playboy in 1972.

According to the Playboy Web site — (Hey, I gotta do my research) — the magazine has printed only two party school lists — 1986 and 2002. Mankato didn’t make either.

Still, drinking a lot has always been a pastime of many students.

The heydays of unregulated partying were in the 1970s and ’80s. During Vietnam, a number of less-than-academically-committed young men decided to attend college, lessening their draft potential. Many were, however, committed to drinking.

Weekend nights drew young people from far and wide to the apartments and rental homes around the campus where open-door parties abounded. Anyone could walk in, kick in a few bucks, and join in.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Highland Hills Apartments was the epicenter of come one, come all beer bashes. Each Thursday evening, spring and fall, someone would order up a beer truck that drove into the center grass courtyards created by four apartment complexes.

Music from a stereo blasting out one of the apartment windows provided the entertainment. The organizers stood by the entrances, charged a few bucks for a plastic cup, and hundreds of people streamed in, serving themselves from the beer-truck taps. Somewhere around midnight, as the taps began sputtering, reinforcements arrived in a fresh beer truck.

The campus Veterans Club also held annual parties. I always like the advertised name of the events — “The Vets Picnic.” Accurate only if your idea of a picnic is a few thousand people in a three-day outdoor drunk.

College kids are attracted to cheap drinks like moths to a light bulb.