Beer is returning to University of Rhode Island football games this season, but the days of drunken carousing in parking lots near Meade Stadium will make no such comeback.

“If it ever went back to the way it was, it will go away again,” the director of athletics, Thorr Bjorn, said Thursday, a day after the university announced its decision to lift the 15-year-old ban on alcohol consumption in tailgating areas.

“We want everybody to have a good time,” he said, “but there will be zero tolerance.”

URI donors will be allowed to bring their own alcoholic beverages to designated lots in front of the Ryan Center and at Ellery Pond just beyond the south end zone. Tailgaters in the Plains Road lot across from the Ryan Center will be able to buy beer and wine from a vendor; they will not be allowed to bring their own alcoholic beverages. The parking fee there will be $10.

Parking lots for Keaney Gym and Boss Arena at the Route 138 entrance to the URI athletics complex will be designated as family/alcohol-free areas. There will be no parking fee in those lots.

The police will patrol all tailgating areas, and the police and vendors may request identification from those with alcohol.

“We’re always trying to enhance the football game-day experience. I always thought that if managed, it could be a positive experience,” Bjorn said.

Tailgating at URI football games plummeted after former president Robert L. Carothers banned alcohol from most campus venues in the mid-1990s in an attempt to combat a culture of alcohol abuse. Students had become intoxicated in tailgate areas, and fraternities were the scenes of repeated disruptive behavior. In 1996, members of the football team raided a fraternity on a Monday afternoon in response to the treatment of two non-roster players at a frat party the previous Saturday night.

“The alcohol policy around tailgating was absolutely the right decision at the right time,” said Bjorn, an assistant athletics director at the University of Massachusetts at the time.

“We had the same problem at UMass, and tailgating went away for a long time,” he said.

The culture has changed in the years since Carothers turned off the tap. Society in general is less tolerant of alcohol abuse, and URI is no longer considered one of the top party schools in the nation.

“The world has changed,” Bjorn said.

So has the URI president. David M. Dooley succeeded Carothers on July 1. Dooley was provost and vice president for academic affairs at Montana State. Bjorn said that Dooley “has taken the time to look at a lot of policies in place . . . The timing of this made sense because football season is around the corner.”

URI will kick off the 2009 season Sept. 5 at home against Fordham. The second home game will be held Oct. 10 against Towson. Remaining home dates are Oct. 17 against Hofstra, Oct. 31 against William & Mary and Nov. 21 against Northeastern.

All tailgating areas will open three hours before the scheduled kickoff and close 15 minutes before the start of the game. The police will sweep the areas to enforce the policy. Before the alcohol ban, many tailgaters never went to the game.

“I like to think we can get people moving. Beer and wine sales will be shut down, which should help,” Bjorn said. “We’re not doing this to provide a place for people to have a party. We’re doing it to enhance the experience.”

The tailgating areas will reopen after the game and remain open for one hour. Beer and wine will be on sale at that time from a designated vendor.

Kegs, bottles and large quantities of alcohol will not be allowed in the Ryan Center and Ellery Pond donor lots, and alcohol will not be sold in Meade Stadium or the Ryan Center.

URI officials devised the new policy with input from various constituencies on and off campus, among them the URI, South Kingstown and state police. Bjorn said the police recommended that vendors sell beer and wine because “they’re professionals. They know how to manage crowds.”

URI will receive a percentage of the beer and wine sales, Bjorn said, those proceeds plus the $10 parking fee will help defray the cost of security. He hopes that fans will become donors at least at the Captain’s Society level of $250 to gain access to the Ryan Center and Ellery Pond lots. He also hopes that the new tailgating policy will result in increased ticket sales.

The tailgating regulations and FAQs are posted on the football page at gorhody.com.

mszostak@projo.com