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prizzabroy t1_iu28ovi wrote

I mean… I could honestly care less about a VCU branded beer, but really? This is a useless decision and will make ZERO impact on fraternity drinking. What was the point of this? To save face? That’s what it sounds like. I mean… it’s not like Hardywood hasn’t created gross-branded beer for other VA universities. Pretty sure hazing will continue regardless.

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dr_nerdface t1_iu2svd4 wrote

the ram bam (name notwithstanding) is actually pretty tasty. sad that the world will never know.

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HopBomb14 t1_iu4r93o wrote

I'd be amazed if Hardywood didn't rebrand the liquid, they're not going to just toss out a batch of beer.

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dr_nerdface t1_iu4u1jl wrote

almost all of it already went out to Brown. they are going to "destroy it". like 350+ cases. real shame.

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HopBomb14 t1_iu4ugnq wrote

Yea, we got the C&D yesterday. That's a bummer, figured they would just relabel the cans.

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Davidm241 t1_iu2as5z wrote

Is it gross? I haven’t tried it. I usually stick to their stouts.

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prizzabroy t1_iu2bzeq wrote

I’m not really a Hardywood fan. Their stouts are what I would consider their quality beers. Their Gingerbread Stout has quite the cult following. The Great Divide is gross and so are the rest of their beers imo.

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Davidm241 t1_iu2l3po wrote

Valid opinion. Agreed their stouts are the best, although unlike most high alcohol stouts they age poorly. So if you buy the gingerbreads you can’t expect them to taste well a month later. I will say, I quite enjoy their basic Richmond Lager.

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DirtyJamesmydia t1_iu9dwyr wrote

I like their Pils and Richmond Lager. Hokie lager was meh. Suncrush is a nice change of pace. I think Great Return is awful. Outside of that their one off ipa's are actually pretty good.

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lemon_difficult90 t1_iu425ut wrote

With all due respect to the dead and his family, this is no. This beer would have had little to no impact on drinking, Greek letter organizations, or students in general at VCU. College kids get housed on shitty beer and liquor because that’s what they can afford in large quantities. VCU getting its own microbrew would not have changed that. And the thing about hazing, if you actually want to do something about stopping it, is that there are so many other ways to do it than just making a pledge drink to death. Just as an example, when I was at UVA, some poor guy was made to drink a bunch of soy sauce and nearly died from that. They shut down that fraternity, but I believe it happened again at a different frat a couple of years later. The jerks who want to do things like that will find a way. You’re not saving anyone by shutting down a beer that would primarily have been a nice thing for alums.

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neatlair t1_iu3rh26 wrote

What a bunch of softies in charge over there. This made my eyes roll hard.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iu3z55i wrote

Yeah.

And I'm sorry, but with as much respect to the deceased as possible, a VCU themed lager has exactly zero connection with a fraternity force feeding liquor in an act of hazing.

Simply having a beer with a university logo on it is not encouraging binge drinking or forcing anyone to drink themselves to death. I don't think Virginia Tech saw an increase in student hospitalizations from chugging cases of Hokie Lager.

The presence of a VCU labeled lager isn't going to increase student drinking. It's college. They are going to drink the cheapest beer in large quantities either way. Given the increased price of a microbrewed VCU lager over cheaper mass market options like Natty Light, Bud Light, etc., I find it hard to believe this would even sell in large amounts in the first place. Students aren't gonna regularly pay $1+ per beer bottle or can just because it has a black and gold typeface and the ram on it.

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Onefotccn t1_iu4d70t wrote

JMU, VT and UVA all have their own branded beers. And none of these beers have any impact on student drinking. Students aren't going to drink this beer more because it has VCU in the name, they're going to stick with the cheapest shit they can get.

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moto68040 t1_iu451np wrote

wheres my Rams Chronic tho? Sour Rao Herer?

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whitemanwhocantjump t1_iu3ysg5 wrote

It looks pretty good. I say maybe rebrand it and offer a deal to UR if VCU doesn't want it.

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Ditovontease t1_iu4a36u wrote

So because of frats being shitty (and greek life isn't even big enough to justify having to join one while at vcu) vcu can't have a branded beer like every other state school

Fucking eye roll

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Charlesinrichmond t1_iu4rau6 wrote

what performative nonsense. The uproar about calling a beer after Rams is just such bs.

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someotherguyrva t1_iu517xt wrote

This is perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. This beer had nothing to do with the kids death. His death is because of idiots in fraternities. Shut fraternities down and you won’t have hazing deaths. A VCU branded beer did not kill that kid. Absolutely dumb mindless decision on the part of VCU. I know they’re trying to appease the family and I can’t imagine their loss, but discontinuing the VCU branded beer will not bring him back and it will not stop any future hazing deaths by idiots in fraternities.

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Sunf1re96 t1_iu4ghhl wrote

The article I read from a couple days ago made it clear that the issue was putting VCU brand on alcohol products is against policy, and the committee of staff and professors did not vote in favor of this beer. And yet it was made anyway. Obviously, the death of the student was tragic, but my impression was that was not the sole reason for denying the VCU branded product.

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ohgodhowdothis t1_iu415z1 wrote

Ill take it if they dont want it anymore

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Both-Internal-6970 t1_iu4mq6d wrote

As if they're not making enough money off parking alone

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gbkl74 t1_iu5ar8j wrote

VCU, Read the room!

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TresKidneys t1_iu4grw8 wrote

I’ll get downvoted for this but it’s the truth. VCU’s final four run was one of the worst things to happen to Richmond. The university changed focus basically overnight.

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lemon_difficult90 t1_iu4m4iq wrote

You’re not wrong at all, though the way I see it might not be how you mean. I went to VCU for a couple of years right before the Final Four run, and although I didn’t love it there, I liked that VCU knew and owned what it was. It leaned in to being artsy, urban, and kinda grimy, and it didn’t want to be like the other state schools. After 2011, it started trying to fit in, and that’s not VCU at all. I remember my best friend spotting a black and yellow striped bowtie at the bookstore around when he graduated in 2014 and being totally baffled by it. VCU is not a bowtie school, and you go there because you don’t want to go to a bowtie school. I also noticed that around the time of the branding change, they decided to acknowledge MCV’s founding date as when the school started versus the RPI-MCV merger, which I can only assume was to make it ✨historic✨ like the other state schools. When I started there in 2008, they were promoting the school’s 40th anniversary, and now all of a sudden it’s almost 200 years old. Obviously this is just a couple of anecdotal examples and doesn’t get into anything about what it’s done to the city itself, but I do think they fit into the bigger problem: the Final Four caused VCU to absolutely lose its mind and systematically kill off everything that made it unique. Mason didn’t do this after their Cinderella run. The only way it makes sense is equal parts delusion and greed.

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TresKidneys t1_iu4o744 wrote

Actually you hit the nail on the head! I started in 2005 and VCU was kind of seen as a misfit art college. That was the fun of it though, you were in a big city, not closed off from it. I don’t know, maybe the change was going to happen no matter what, but I think a sudden influx of NCAA money definitely sped things up.

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lemon_difficult90 t1_iu4om4g wrote

I think you’re right again! Some of it was probably inevitable, but the choices that the administration made kicked it into turbo. A lot of the problem seems to be Rao, and I do wonder if Trani or somebody else would have done it all the same way.

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TresKidneys t1_iu4oyuh wrote

Didn’t Rao explicitly state that his goal for VCU was real estate? Maybe I’m misremembering, it feels like he’s been there a lifetime.

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lemon_difficult90 t1_iu4p2uc wrote

I don’t know for sure, but it would certainly make sense if he did.

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TresKidneys t1_iu4q1cs wrote

Well either way, I’m glad to know there are people that remember VCU wasn’t always a basketball program with a library attached

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americanspirit64 t1_iu41xeu wrote

This really isn't about whether students drink or not, its all about optics. Fraternities at VCU are actually a very small portion of the student body on the whole. It's actually about using the VCU brand, as another way of tunneling money to VCU. The commodification of all education and knowledge at VCU isn't enough for them, they now want a piece of the after hours social and fun pie at VCU. VCU is afterall, not about providing a needed educational experience for students, its about extracting cash from them as a profit making enterprise. Greed in the educational systems throughout America is little more than wholesale extortion on a massive scale. This is just about VCU trying to play the profit game at a state run institution, in conjuction with Hardywood Brewry, if no one had called them out they would still be selling "Ram Bam", a disgusting name that insinuates and promotes alcohol consumption in the same way they have partnered with fast food companies to get students to consume junk food. Its also about the suggestion that 'Ram Bam' is some kind of energy drink, like Red Bull and all those other terrible for you to consume caffine drinks. Again profit making companies making profit is all that matters to them. VCU's true institutional brand, needs to be a high quality education in a safe environment that promotes and attracts students from Virginia that desperately needs a low cost education so they can become contributeing members to society. Of course they rather fill the classroom with out of state students, who pay a third more, for the same education. In a Capitialist economy it doesn't make sense for VCU to try and attract the children from our own state to go to VCU as they pay less. Why would they do that, they make more profit pandering to out of state students. There are no longer any four year colleges in Viginia that cater to the working class families of Virginia. No benifits or educational perks for our children, who are competing against children from various states that had a better lower school education, because those states have higher quality school systems. There should be no difference in the quality of education, between a public school education and a private one in Virginia. The whole, we were going to use the profit from selling beer for student scholarships, is just a load of crap. They need to use the money to to off-set the cost of lowering tutition for Virginia's state students.

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Ditovontease t1_iu4ad1y wrote

I mean I understand the energy but this is about beer being sold at basketball games.

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americanspirit64 t1_iu4ojyh wrote

True. I am laughing. Beer being sold at basketball games didn't even occur to me. Of course that makes it worst, in the same way everyone in America is ripped off by concessions in movie theaters when they sell products at outrageous prices as they have a captive audience. College sports as a money making venture sort of bothers me. Using student labor (the players) who aren't being paid is a type of abuse, it abuses the students as well by charging higher prices. Now if VCU said they branded a beer so they could sell it cheaper that would be different, but they would never do that.

But okay, I understand your point.

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maz108 t1_iu4f6he wrote

Your dumb kid got mixed up with a bunch of morons perpetuating a disgusting subculture. How exactly is that Hardywood’s issue?

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