3 Oregon college presidents want drinking age lowered to 18

[Woodmonkey]

2 Withdraw From Petition to Rethink Drinking Age
By SHAILA DEWAN

ATLANTA — Two college presidents, both in Georgia, have withdrawn their names from a petition to reconsider the legal drinking age after it drew blistering criticism this week from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, safety experts, transportation officials and politicians.

But 15 more from across the country have signed on, the organizers said Thursday.

All told, 123 presidents from colleges including Dartmouth, Duke, Ohio State and Tufts are supporting the petition, which says that raising the drinking age to 21 has fostered a culture of clandestine binge drinking and that students’ use of fake identification has eroded their respect for the law.

“Twenty-one is not working,” the statement reads.

But critics have accused the presidents of misleading the public, shirking their responsibility to enforce the law and trying to dodge the problem of student drinking.

The Governors Highway Safety Association has promised to hold at its national meeting next month “a workshop to help highway safety agencies counter any effort in their states to lower the drinking age.”

Kendall Blanchard, the president of Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, said he had pulled his name off the list in part because critics had misunderstood the petition’s intent. “It was clear to me that they didn’t see this as a dialogue; they saw this as some kind of effort on our part to turn our schools into party schools,” he said.

The other president who withdrew from the petition was Robert M. Franklin of Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Many critics said they objected to the suggestion that studies did not conclusively show a benefit to raising the drinking age, particularly the reduction of alcohol-related traffic deaths among young drivers.

“Why would you take the one thing that has been tried in the last 30 years that has been shown to be most successful and throw that out the window and say, ‘I have a better idea?’ ” said Alexander C. Wagenaar, an epidemiologist at the College of Medicine at the University of Florida.

But college presidents say they are fighting a losing battle with binge drinking and alcohol poisoning.

“Many of our university presidents are doing as good a job as they can at enforcing the drinking age,” said John M. McCardell Jr., the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont and a leader of the petition effort, which began last month. “They’re doing all the right things, and what is the result? Well, young people are moving beyond the view of the college officials and often beyond the boundaries of the college campuses, and campus officials have no authority there.”

S. Georgia Nugent, the president of Kenyon College in Ohio, who signed the petition, said, “I think there’s a direct connection between this law and this pattern of secret, fast consumption of high-octane alcohol. It’s much more dangerous than the traditional great big, loud keg party because it happens quietly, out of view.”

Mr. McCardell is the founder of Choose Responsibility, an organization that advocates lowering the drinking age, but the petition drive, called the Amethyst Initiative after the gemstone that the Greeks believed would ward off intoxication, calls only for “dispassionate public debate” of the issue. The drinking age has been 21 across the country since 1988.

In a written statement that Mr. McCardell called “intimidation bordering on bullying,” Laura Dean-Mooney, the president of MADD, asked the public to call the signers and demand that they remove themselves from the list.

“As the mother of a daughter who is close to entering college, it is deeply disappointing to me that many of our education leaders would support an initiative without doing their homework on the underlying research and science,” Ms. Dean-Mooney said in the statement. “Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on under-age and binge drinking policies.”

College presidents should focus on changing the culture on campus, Ms. Dean-Mooney said. She cited efforts like requiring alcohol education, scheduling more Friday classes to cut down on Thursday night parties, fighting marketing efforts like drink specials and ladies’ nights near campuses and coordinating with local law enforcement agencies.

But students said they were not getting drunk in bars.

“From freshman year on, I hardly ever went out on the weekends without having four or five shots of vodka beforehand,” said Diane Bash, a senior at Ohio State University. “You’ve got to preload before you get to a bar because you can’t drink once you go in. I definitely drink a lot less now that I’m 21, and so do all my friends.”

Despite such tales of excess, experts said there was little hard evidence that binge drinking became more prevalent after the drinking age was raised to 21. One of the most comprehensive studies shows that heavy drinking among college students, defined as five or more drinks in a row, peaked in 1984.

Other studies by Henry Wechsler, a retired professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, show that binge drinking remained steady, with about 44 percent of college students doing it, from 1993 to 2001.

The controversy shines a light on the culture gap between college students and their nonstudent peers, who drink less.

Chuck Hurley, the chief executive of MADD, acknowledged that widespread drinking on campus fostered a distinct set of problems. “The drinking age is working far better in blue-collar America, or community college America, than in Ivy League America,” he said.

The Source

[Sally Brown]

Hmmmm ... that last paragraph speaks volumes:

Chuck Hurley, the chief executive of MADD, acknowledged that widespread drinking on campus fostered a distinct set of problems. “The drinking age is working far better in blue-collar America, or community college America, than in Ivy League America,” he said.

Blue-collar America and community college which teach the trades of blue-collar America. Blue-collar America which is America at its best productivity and responsibility because it is America WORKING not partying. So for the binge-drinking Ivy League irresponsibles, we lower a drinking age, and legally endorse and enable more drunk driving related killings? Middle America (i.e., blue-collar America) doesn't need it because it is already being responsible for itself. The only one who benefits from the lowering of the drinking age is the older adult liquor store/distributorship owner who can sell whilst washing his/her hands of any responsibility in a drunk-driving related death of an innocent because it was legal to sell to that irresponsible Ivy League co-ed the means to impairment.

[Rohrbough]

Well, I do have a good amount of knowledge on this topic!!! When I was in, being 18 and in the USMC, we could drink on base. ON BASE ONLY. It really wasnt a problem, the E Clubs had plenty of NCOs on duty, and hell the MPs were only a phone call away....I do agree with letting service members drink on base only. But if they go into the community, it is a no-go. If you can get deployed to a foreign land and fight and die for your country, by all means, yes it should be okay. If you are a college student, really what are you sacrificing for your fellow citizens and your country??? Not a damn thing, you are advancing yourself, not protecting one single soul. Kids nowadays piss me the hell off. Everything should be handed to them on a silver platter with no work involved on their part. They show no respect for their elders, veterans, police, etc...as for the military, let the Armed Services drink on base. Its only right. That was the law when I was 18, and the Corporals and Sergeants took care of any problems, like a good strong NCO should.

Like plenty of us already know, if you want to get booze, you can, no matter what age you are. I can only imagine what is next if 18 year old college students are allowed to buy and consume alcohol........well if we legalize marijuana, it will stop kids from smokin weed too right??? I dont like where this is going...just my .02 cents!!!

[BrianK]

Lowering the age to 18 is going to cure binge drinking?

The there is the logic of it you are old enough to join the military and serve then you are old enough to drink. Does that also mean that there will be boot camps and training for drinking?

I like the anaolgy of well when I was 18 or a little younger I drank & I'm still alive. I did too I even got a false ID at the age of 16 so I could drink legally in Ohio at their age requirment of 18. That was way back when getting false ID was not as easy as generating an ID on the computer is now.

What is going to be in place to stop younger kids from buying alcohol? Obviously there are laws in place now that aren't working but is it really a sane approach to add to the problem?

I'm trying to undrstand the logic of lowering the age. Maybe at that earlier age THAT will help them be prepared to attend college and not binge drink. Then colleges won't have irresponsible kids to deal with.

[Woodmonkey]

The Right Age for Drinking

COLLEGE OFFICIALS who have signed on to the provocative proposition that the legal drinking age of 21 isn't working say that they just want to start a debate. Perhaps when they get done with that, they can move on to whether Earth really orbits the sun. Any suggestion that the current drinking age hasn't saved lives runs counter to the facts.

More than 100 presidents and chancellors from such top universities as Duke and Johns Hopkins say it's time to rethink the drinking age, contending it has caused "a culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking.' " The statement does not specifically advocate reducing the drinking age, but many who signed it say they thought legal drinking should begin at 18.

Health and safety experts have reacted with dismay, because raising the drinking age has saved many lives. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed 49 studies published in scientific journals and concluded that alcohol-related traffic crashes involving young people increased 10 percent when the drinking age was lowered in the 1970s and decreased 16 percent when the drinking age was raised. The retreat from a lower drinking age translates into some 900 lives saved each year among 16- to 20-year-olds. Those who would argue that other factors, such as safer cars, are responsible should take a good look at numbers posted by Mothers Against Drunk Driving showing alcohol-related traffic fatalities among 16- to 20-year-olds decreasing 60 percent between 1982 and 2006 while non-alcohol-related fatalities increased 34 percent.

The college presidents are right about binge drinking. Each year, some 1,700 college students die from causes related to alcohol use; there is also the toll of injuries and sexual assaults fueled by alcohol. But where is the logic of solving the underage drinking problem by lowering the age even more? Henry Wechsler, the Harvard expert whose studies of binge drinking popularized the phrase, put it best, comparing lowering the drinking age to "pouring gasoline to put the fire out."

Work by experts such as Mr. Wechsler, as well as the experience of college officials committed to solutions, shows that strong steps to enforce the law and change the culture can produce results. Instead of talking about lowering the drinking age (and thereby shifting the problem to high schools), colleges should be working to develop better enforcement methods, expand education and counseling, and end pricing practices that make alcohol more accessible and attractive. Then, too, college officials can stop winking at fraternity bashes that, whether they are willing to admit it or not, add to the allure of going off to college.

The Source

[Bluehawk]

Finally... somebody in journalism with a functioning brain.