Bar Crawl, that boozy senior-year rite of passage, got closer to closing time when SUNY Chancellor John Ryan told a Binghamton radio station earlier this week that it ought to be “done away with.”

Officials are brainstorming “alternative activities,” a Binghamton University spokeswoman said, but she declined to specify what exactly might supplement the nearly-12-hour drinking festival.

But BU’s student leaders are vowing to fight for the class of 2007’s right to party.

In the Friday-of-finals-week tradition that dates back years, thousands of BU students make the final “crawl” from pub to pub, starting on the West Side and meeting up on State Street each spring. Last year 12 bars participated.

Ryan said in an October online column that he wants to “educate” SUNY students about alcohol to help lower statistics like ones from 2005 showing 1,700 student deaths, 599,000 injuries, and 97,000 sex assaults nationwide.

He discusses tougher alcohol and drug policies — which BU introduced two years ago — and opening on-campus bars as ways of trying to curb binge drinking. Coincidentally, BU’s own campus pub closed in 1998 because of “financial difficulties.”

Ryan said he was “appalled” by SUNY-Albany’s Fountain Day, a school-sponsored weekday festival made infamous in 2004 when bacchanalian overcrowding injured several students.

UAlbany officials later moved Fountain Day to a weekend, restricted who could enter the fountain and transformed the event into a sober pillow fight.

That might be impossible at BU, where students on the Senior Class Council, not administrators, run Bar Crawl.

Still, said SUNY spokeswoman Casey Cannistraci in a statement, “[t]raditions like the bar crawl in Binghamton … are not healthy and do not reflect the kind of values that SUNY tries to instill in its students.”

She added that “drinking alcohol” was a “bad habit” in which only “a small number” of students partake. Last year’s Bar Crawl drew around 2,000 Bearcats, mostly seniors.

“Parents put their trust in the college’s administration to see that the student life environment is safe and healthy,” she said, citing a SUNY-wide smoking ban as an example of fulfilling the “trust,” and added that the chancellor hoped for “zero tolerance” for underage drinking, “both on and off campus.”

BU’s outgoing vice president for student affairs, Rodger Summers, said in a statement that the University would embrace Ryan’s alcohol agenda.

“We work with students and local authorities to try and lessen the impact the Bar Crawl and these kinds of events have on our students and the community,” he said, “… and we work hard to encourage and educate students to make good choices about alcohol use.”

Whatever administrators’ plans, Bar Crawl will continue, promised Senior Class Council member Florina Getman.

“No other activity will replace [that] Binghamton tradition,” she said. “Bar Crawl will go on — you best believe it.”

Binghamton barkeeps also vowed to keep traditions alive — no matter what SUNY’s chancellor says.

“It’s a celebration of students who have spent four years of dedication earning bachelor’s degrees,” said Gene Fast, who runs Flashbacks/Boca Joe’s on State Street. “It’s a shame he doesn’t feel 21-year-olds are responsible enough to go out and celebrate, and I think the students deserve it.”

And it seems little can legally be done to stop it, short of closing the bars — an unlikely alterative, said Binghamton City Police Chief Steven Tronovitch.

“The act of public intoxication itself is not against law,” Tronovitch said.

But carrying alcohol in an open container — ahem, a Bar Crawl mug — is illegal, and officers will be more strictly enforcing open-containers violations this year than in Bar Crawls past, Tronovitch said.

“If you’re going out for a cigarette, leave your drink inside,” he advised.

Tronovitch said that “it’s important that the senior class sees that … the event is going to be scrutinized on all levels — from the University perspective, from law enforcement perspective and from the city administration perspective.”

Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan (no relation to the SUNY chancellor) also said that ending Bar Crawl wouldn’t likely be an option.

“It’s a rite of passage every year, and we’re not going to stop it,” Ryan said, “and if we try to stop it we’re gong to have more problems than we will now. People will celebrate anyway.”

He advised students to obey both open-container and anti-littering statutes.

At BU, the Student Code of Conduct prohibiting student groups from selling or giving away “alcohol or alcohol-related products” and “cups with the name of a tavern, club or other drinking establishment printed on them” could be used to try to stymie Bar Crawl.

But student leaders say they are undaunted.

“Mugs without the pub name do follow the student code of conduct, and as long as we don’t advertise them as ‘Bar Crawl’ mugs, then we are following the rules according the University,” said Dave Belsky, the BU Student Association’s executive vice president.