So, kids, wanna have a nice cold one? Sorry. We're here to protect you from that.
But all that might change. In the news this week are reports of the burgeoning Amethyst Initiative, the movement among college presidents to lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. Signatories to the Initiative now number 123; that's 123 college presidents who officially advocate for a change in the culture of teenage drinking. (Full disclosure: the president of the college where I teach, Elizabeth Coleman of Bennington College, is a signatory to the Amethyst Initiative, although we have never discussed it.) The Amethystians have a sophisticated argument going for them, which boils down to something like this: college kids are going to drink one way or the other. Making it illegal to drink alcohol until a kid is 21 forces drinking into an underground, off-campus culture dominated by binge drinking, and this way of consuming alcohol is more dangerous to kids than if it were legal at age 18 and therefore more integrated into normal campus life.
The Amethyst Initiative is bitterly opposed by pressure groups like Mothers Against Drink Driving, who point to research which demonstrates that when and where the legal age has been lowered to age 18, more kids in the 18 to 21 age bracket are killed in drunk driving accidents. MADD's argument is, basically, that kids should be prevented from drinking until they are mature enough to handle responsible drinking. On the other side, the Amethystians point out that shifting the legal age to 21 simply shifts the preponderance of fatal drunk-driving accidents to the 21-25 age bracket. They argue that some kids will drink to excess when they are learning how much they can handle, whether they are 18 or 21: raising the legal age doesn't mean there are fewer deaths, just older deaths. And the "brain maturity" argument doesn't really hold much water: since neuroscientists now demonstrate that kids' brains don't fully mature until age 25, using this reasoning the legal drinking age should be raised to 25, a neo-Prohibitionist stance which no one would tolerate.
MADD has scored one good point in this argument, especially the what's-in-it-for-you point: nowhere in the Amethystian literature to date (at least not that I could find) does the Initiative make the obvious point about colleges' own self-interest. Colleges spend tons of money on security personnel whose sole job it is to prevent college kids from drinking, a losing battle if ever there was one. And the cost of defensive legal action is enormous, because under current laws if a kid drinks herself to death on campus the college is, of course, at fault. So colleges have a big economic stake in this argument, and the Amethystians' pure "we're only concerned about our students' health" argument is disingenuous at best.
On the other hand, why should colleges pay dearly to protect kids from the consequences of their own actions? When people bitch about the escalating cost of higher education, perhaps they should consider how much it actually costs to treat kids like babies. Two-year-olds really do need to be protected, but 18-year-olds? There is a developmental point of view here, and it needs to be proclaimed: kids don't learn to be responsible by being protected until they are adults, when they suddenly become responsible. They learn to be responsible by gradually taking charge of their own lives.
As a college teacher, I see far too many kids forced into a regressed position regarding drinking: it becomes a cat-and-mouse game with college security personnel, and defeating the killjoy adults is part of the game. As a result, personal responsibility is deferred. The fantasy is that omnipotent adults (i.e. Mommy and Daddy) will make everything turn out all right, so I can take as many risks with my body as I want. As a clinician, I see this kind of thing all the time with younger kids: for example, with the teenage boys who punch their dads and then are genuinely surprised when Dad gets physically injured ("But Dad is omnipotent! He can't be hurt by a little kid like me!") This drinking fantasy is more of the same: "I'm not a grownup; Mom and Dad (or the dean, or RA, or whoever is in charge on campus) will always make sure I'm okay...so I can drink as much as I want!"
Guess again, kid. You're on your own now. So, as the Amethystians suggest, why not make it official?
