Last month, the leaders of roughly 100 American universities convened in Raleigh, N.C., to discuss efforts to lower the national drinking age of 21. Although the Amethyst Initiative, as it is called, has yet to articulate sound alternatives to current law, its core message — that 21 is not working — is worthy of serious consideration.
Congress passed the National Minimum Age Drinking Act of 1984 with the intent of reducing unconscionably high rates of highway fatalities among young drivers. The law required all states to raise the minimum age for the purchase of alcohol to 21 or face a 10 percent reduction in federal highway funds. The threat of losing coveted federal dollars, as well as an intense campaign to reduce drunken driving deaths by groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, assured the law would pass and wouldn’t change for a long time to come.
But perhaps that time has come. While there has been a clear and consistent trend of increased road safety in the two decades since the law’s enactment, the improvement is at least partly due to safer cars and increased enforcement and awareness of drunken driving. And while road statistics may reflect favorably upon the high drinking age, the campus drinking scene does not.
The drinking culture fostered by the current age requirement is not one of responsibility and sobriety. Students aged 18 to 20 are as determined as their elder classmates to drink, but because of the underground nature of their actions, they often do so at considerably greater danger. The high restriction of alcohol forces minors to seek risky methods for acquiring and using alcohol, including going to unregulated and overcrowded house parties, binging harder and faster to avoid being caught and avoiding necessary contact with police and health services in situations when help is most needed.
However, the University of Wisconsin has so far refrained from critically examining the drinking age, instead choosing to pursue the tired tactics of increased restriction, as evidenced by its recent purchase of nine ID scanners for area liquor retailers.
The goals of reducing irresponsible drinking habits can’t be pursued in earnest while a key segment of the drinking community is excluded from the discussion. Underage students account for roughly half of the total alcohol consumption on college campuses nationwide, and the secretive ways it is consumed puts more students at risk of alcohol poisoning and physical or sexual assault.
For these reasons, we urge Chancellor Biddy Martin to join the former chancellor of UW-Parkside, Jack Keating, and president of Ripon College, David Joyce, in signing the Amethyst Initiative. Signatories are not required to unequivocally support a lower drinking age — only to acknowledge the flaws of the current system and work for a system that improves the health and safety of college students.
