Anytime more than 100 college presidents sign their names to a document, one naturally expects to find a well-meaning but wrong-headed exercise in political correctness. How mildly intoxicating, then, to discover the Amethyst Initiative, a case of ivory-tower interventionism that is actually sensible and even a bit brave: a proposal from 128 university leaders that legislators reconsider the national drinking age.Led by former Middlebury College President John McCardell, the signers hail from schools as far-flung as Pomona, Tufts, Dartmouth, Duke and Ohio State, as well as from dozens of smaller regional schools. Their argument is a tactful recognition of the law of unintended consequences. Their bottom line: The current national drinking age of 21, raised from age 18 in some states in 1984, "isn't working."
They say that legally restricting alcohol consumption among most college-age students hasn't stopped such drinking -- it has only driven it underground. Binge drinking on campus now claims 1,700 lives a year, and university efforts to crack down are largely ineffective. Banning kegs just means that kids make use of more easily concealed and trafficked cans and bottles. Hard-partying fraternities don't stop their activities; they are just chased away from campus and set up shop nearby, or move off-campus on their own.
Re-legalizing the consumption of alcohol for those between 18 and 21, the college presidents say, would lead not to more drinking but to safer drinking. Because parties wouldn't be illegal, schools and parents could have more control over them. Kids would drink in campus pubs rather than in the woods or in unsupervised dorms and apartments, where no responsible parent or business owner or campus authority is standing by to make sure that they don't drive or to call them a cab or, in case of emergency, an ambulance.
On the Amethyst Initiative's Web site, some college presidents post the reasons they signed the petition. David C. Joyce of Ripon College writes: "It is ludicrous that we can send young men and women to war, but they can't legally drink a beer." Donald Eastman of Eckerd College calls the current law "hypocritical, ineffective, guilt-inducing and counterproductive." David Oxtoby of Pomona notes that "treating college students as adults will help them to make more responsible decisions."
Naturally, opponents have lambasted the proposal as irresponsible and dangerous. Mothers Against Drunk Driving says that the higher drinking age has reduced drunken-driving deaths -- a position that is regularly cited as the strongest argument for the status quo. But letting kids drink at 18 doesn't extend to them the right to drive while drunk. Lawbreaking is lawbreaking. Still, MADD's Laura Dean-Mooney insists: "Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge drinking policies." Alas, that wouldn't leave students with many options for higher education. Even Brigham Young and Bob Jones may not be totally dry.
The initiative that the university presidents propose is called "Amethyst" to echo a Greek word for sobriety. But undoubtedly their lawyers have also been whispering some Latin words in their ears, like in loco parentis. In September 2000, MIT settled a lawsuit for $6 million with the family of a freshman who died in a case of alcohol poisoning. There have been other cases, but MIT's gained national attention and promised to open the plaintiff-bar floodgates.
Since then, schools have adopted various policies aimed at demonstrating both their lack of responsibility for teenage drinking and their disapproval of it. But the policies haven't gotten them off the hook. Last year, a Yale undergrad filed a $20 million lawsuit against the university after a young man was charged with sexually assaulting her after a school-sponsored party. The school was liable, she argued, because its supervision of underage drinking was inadequate. Yale "encourages some of these activities," her lawyer said, because "they have no real rules or control on campus."
Incidents of drunken idiocy, of course, will always be one of the banes of a university president's life. These days even candidates for the White House are comfortable fessing up to "young and irresponsible" behavior with alcohol and drugs. But to suggest that a university administration is solely responsible for its students' drinking habits is a little unrealistic -- especially when the drinking goes on in secret, behind locked doors or off-campus. And it's refreshing that a few people in positions of authority have finally noticed the absurdity of the situation.
Alas, a MADD counteroffensive, which calls on the public to urge the signers to withdraw their names from the list, has had some success. Last week, heat from the press and potentially from alumni got to Kendall Blanchard, president of Georgia Southwestern State University, who noted that critics missed all the subtlety and instead "saw this as some kind of effort on our part to turn our schools into party schools." Robert Franklin of Atlanta's Morehouse College also withdrew his name, while others have continued to sign on.
Whatever its initial good intentions, a national drinking age of 21 has proved to be a failure. Teen drinking is still going on, but now no one is supervising it. Even if the college presidents, with their bold initiative, are just trying to save themselves some legal hassles and money they deserve a toast for stumbling upon this truth.
By: Collin Levy
Wall Street Journal; August 29, 2008
