I'm only one point of "annecdata," but I'm fully on board with the university presidents. I grew up in the deep South, Bible Belt region, where alcohol was met with a love/hate relationship. My cousin, on the other hand, spent time in Europe during her early-mid teens, and lived in a family where wine/beer/cocktails with dinner was the norm.

Guess who went through college and early 20s binge drinking? Moi, of course. To this day (we're in our mid-thirties), I believe I've seen my cousin actually drunk perhaps 2-3 times. For me, it took counseling about other anxiety issues before I stopped using alcohol in an inappropriate way.

It took my own experiences to realize that I needed to control my drinking. The fact that it is illegal only makes us want to find some way to get around it. In my town drinking and smoking are part of the culture. It's a small middle of no where place where this is nothing to do, so we drank to make things interesting.

When I went abroad, while there were still people that couldn't control themselves (as there are anywhere) people were generally much more comfortable with drinking. I was in Ireland, so especially there children are around drinking from a very young age. It's there all there lives. I'm not saying by college they don't party and go out and have fun, because they all know how to have a good time. However, they were for the most part, much more responsible. It was the Americans I went with who were stupid and throwing up because they binge drank so much.

I think that making the drinking age 18 again and attempting to teach some sort of responsible drinking is a great idea. However, I still think setting an age on things is a little bit stupid. I've been drinking since I was 17. I am now a month away from 21, and spent 4 months abroad where I could drink freely. I probably have learned more responsible drinking in that time then several 21 year olds. However, since I have not reached midnight of my 21st birthday yet that makes me unqualified to drink. It really has to do with the experiences you have. If we were desensitized by colleges showing responsible drinking and people not making it so "forbidden" then maybe we would prevent a lot of us having to find out through our own black outs that drinking so much is stupid.