MADD Says Drinking Age Should Remain The Same
College students have been waiting with bated breath to hear what the outcome will be of the Amethyst Initiative and which way it will lead. For those of you out of the loop - the Amethyst Initiative is a proposal from 128 leaders of universities who believe that the drinking age should be lowered to from 18 to 21 and have been trying to get their point across.
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.
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.”
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.” MADD has been pushing hard for people who have signed to remove their names. They have been using the public and the media to show their cause and it looks as if it is working. Kendall Blanchard - the president of Georgia Southwestern State Univeristy removed his name and said that the effort will be used to “turn our schools into party schools”. Robert Franklin of Atlanta’s Morehouse College also withdrew his name.