Fifteen shivering kids lined the brick wall in front of the Athens City Building, white puffs of breath punctuating their yawns in the frigid early morning air.
At 7:45 a.m., the city building’s door opened and the kids shuffled in.
While most of campus recovered from a rowdy Friday night, asleep in their warm beds, the 15 filed into Athens County Municipal Court to thaw in preparation for a Saturday of court-mandated community service.
The group comprised first-time underage alcohol consumption offenders participating in the court’s Underage Drinker’s Diversion Program, which will expunge the charge from their records upon completion. In 2011, more than 680 offenders completed the program.
Underage alcohol consumption is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine up to $1,000, according to Ohio Revised Code.
The steep charge makes the dismissal a perk 19-year-old Jesse Ryster, one of the offenders, simply couldn’t turn down.
“I’m glad I could do this,” said Ryster, a freshman at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. “My record’s gonna be clean. No one wants an underage.”
Ryster said his arrest came as he tried to avoid another one.
“I was leaving a party (at 28 Palmer St. on Halloween) because someone wanted to fight,” Ryster said. “I didn’t want to get arrested for assault, so I handed my beer to a friend and stepped out.”
As Ryster stepped into the brisk night air, five Athens Police officers descended upon him, demanding identification. He was caught.
The program requires participants to pay a more-than $300 fine, attend an alcohol-education class, and read the 343 pages of Koren Zailckas’ Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood.
They also have to complete 12 hours of community service — a chunk of which Ryster and his comrades set out to do that chilly Saturday.
Piling into a white van with “Sheriff” tattooed in yellow across the side, the groggy group traversed the winding gravel roads of Waterloo Township. The van stopped alongside Rhoric Road, a site chosen by Athens County Sheriff’s Deputy Jay Barrett, head of the environmental division, because of the heightened presence of litter.
“It’s a way to help these kids out,” Barrett said. “These are good kids; they just got in a little trouble.”
Almost every Saturday, Barrett takes a group throughout the county, picking up tires and debris cast aside by passers-by.
There are 15 other locations — such as the Athens Historical Society, Dairy Barn Arts Center and Goodwill, where diversion participants can fulfill the other four hours of their community-service requirement — but trash collection was added two years ago.
Participants in the program collected 22,000 tires last year. Because the program is so new, Barrett wasn’t sure whether that number was high or low but hopes the number decreases over time because there would be less litter on the streets.
A $20,000, yearlong grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Amnesty Program funded the endeavor. With the grant, the county brings in a 50-foot truck from Liberty Tire to dispose of tires strewn across less-traveled roads.
Liberty Tire receives $1 per tire and then recycles them for resale.
“We’re all helping each other out,” Barrett said. “It’s a win-win.”
Barrett added that the sheriff’s office plan to apply for the grant again next year.
Barrett doesn’t just take the misfit cleanup crew along county roads. Sometimes they clean up graffiti in the city, state roads and homes where residents can’t afford to clean it up on their own.
“The poverty outside the campus is so rampant. I try to help individuals out as much as possible,” Barrett said.
Participants have 90 days to complete the program. If an offender is cited a second time during that time, they automatically fail and are taken back to court.
It’s a looming threat that Ryster takes into consideration every time he thinks about drinking.
“I don’t go to the bars very much anymore,” Ryster said. “I try to keep it low key.”
A similar thought runs through the minds of the group as they trudge up a gravel hill carrying trash bags. Eventually, only the peeled, black writing on the back of their neon vests is visible against the foggy morning sunlight.
They read: “Where justice is served.”
as218907@ohiou.edu
