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Lower the drinking age? Get serious
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Some 100 college presidents want a national conversation about whether the drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. Though many of the administrators won't come out and say they're for that change, they're happy to explain that the current law isn't working.
Public opinion is not on their side.
An overwhelming majority of adults — of course — oppose allowing fresh high school graduates to buy beer or hard liquor.
A couple things are driving the presidents. Some say the age restriction encourages "binge" drinking because students are getting tanked on campus, before they go to bars where they won't be served.
Other college administrators complain that they're being required (for liability reasons) to police their campuses and enforce a policy that is, for them, a losing battle.
Some proponents of changing the law actually harbor the hope that if you treat the kids like adults, they'll act like adults. Hardly. If that were the case, bright kids wouldn't be flunking out of college, running up exorbitant credit card debt, staying up nights on end and doing any number of other stupid things college students do.
Critics of the presidents say the heart of the problem is that administrators don't want the headaches of holding hearings to decide whether to send students home for violating the law, offering anti-drinking programs and generally playing the heavy on this issue.
Colleges, they say, prefer defining underage drinking out of existence.
That accusation will resonate with a lot of parents who like knowing that the threat of being expelled represents at least a modicum of leverage over their kids, should they think about drinking too much or too often.
Anticipating this and other arguments, the statement from the presidents says,
"How many times must we relearn the lessons of Prohibition? Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer."
The rebuttal to that is easy: Voting, signing a contract and serving on a jury won't get you killed. As for going to war, yes, you may have to kill or get killed. But hopefully you'll be following the order of somebody who has a few years on you.
Ohio State, whose president E. Gordon Gee has signed the statement asking for a broad discussion, has made the news for massive public drunkenness (often including myriad people who are over 21) on football game days.
The University of Dayton, too, has had problems with a student culture that encourages drinking; UD has taken unusual actions — scheduling spring break during the week of St. Patrick's Day, for example — to deter out-of-control campus parties.
The steps that these schools, and so many others, have taken to reduce campus drinking undeniably have not beaten the problem. But it's ludicrous to think that deterrents are having no effect or increasing the temptation.
Referring to the 1984 law that Congress passed that financially penalizes states if they let 18-year-olds drink, William E. Kirwan, former OSU president and now chancellor of the Maryland state university system, has said, "We have this law that, in effect, prevents any state from exploring new ways of addressing the issue. We have a crisis on our hands. We need some new ideas and new thinking."
Yes, but the answer is not to do something that common sense says will invite more of what we don't want.
