OU won’t join movement by colleges to lower drinking age
By Nick Claussen
August 21, 2008
While nearly 100 college and university presidents around the country have signed onto a movement asking federal legislators to consider lowering the drinking age in the United States, Ohio University President Roderick McDavis said he has not been asked to support the proposal and will not support it.
Presidents of colleges including Ohio State University, Duke and Dartmouth have all signed on, though, calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the legal age to 18.
The movement, named the Amethyst Initiative, is based on the idea that the current drinking age actually encourages high-risk, binge drinking.
“A culture of dangerous, clandestine ‘binge drinking’ – often conducted off-campus – has developed,” the Amethyst Initiative statement reads. “Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students. Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer. By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.”
The initiative calls on elected officials to “support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age,” and to encourage new ideas for the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.”
In the 1970s, some states, including Ohio, allowed people between the ages of 18-21 to drink “3.2” or “low” beer, which has less alcohol than regular beer. During this time, some states had their overall drinking age set at 18 or 19, while others used the 21 limit. During the low-beer years in Athens, most 18- to 20-year-old students managed to drink whatever they wanted, since few bars regulated which beer their customers were drinking.
For several years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Ohio’s drinking age was set at 19 for everything. Then in the mid-’80s, the states one by one began raising their legal drinking age after the federal Uniform Drinking Age Act reduced federal transportation funds for states that did not raise their drinking ages to 21. Ohio was one of the last states to surrender to the federal government and raise the drinking age to 21.
The idea behind raising drinking age was that it would reduce drunk-driving-related accidents among teens, which had been increasing.
Led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, proponents argue that the drinking age should be kept as it is, as it has reduced the number of drunk-driving deaths.
The Columbus Dispatch reported earlier this week that while OSU President E. Gordon Gee signed the petition supporting the initiative, he is advocating a discussion about the drinking age and is not necessarily calling for the drinking age to be lowered.
OU PRESIDENT Roderick McDavis said in an e-mail interview on Tuesday that he does not support the initiative.
“I do not recall being asked to sign on to this movement by the organizers via e-mail or letter. If I had been asked to sign on to this movement, I would have declined to do so,” McDavis said. “I strongly believe that the actions Ohio University has taken during the past three years are appropriate responses to high-risk binge-drinking among our students. Clearly we need to continue to search for additional ways to reduce hig-risk binge-drinking among our students.”
Kent Smith, vice president for student affairs at OU, said he is interested in the debate over the national drinking age, but does not advocate changing the age requirement.
“I would be interested in seeing research, empirical data that says it does or it doesn’t (affect binge-drinking),” Smith said. “I certainly have concerns over whether or not it would.”
High-risk drinking is a complex problem, and there is no “magic wand” that will solve the problem in one step, Smith added. Any strategy at attacking high-risk behaviors such as binge-drinking will take a “multi-tiered, multi-layered approach,” Smith said.
College, high-school and even in some cases middle-school students all have to be involved in the discussion over how to stop binge-drinking, he added.
Asked if he is surprised that so many college presidents have agreed to support the initiative, Smith said he is not.
“What you are seeing is presidents who work on campus every day who are concerned about students and their well-being. They are trying to find solutions to a national problem,” Smith said.
OU has taken several steps in recent years to combat high-risk drinking, including adopting the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism framework for dealing with the problem, Smith said. The university has also formed a campus-wide coalition made up of students and faculty to advocate for responsible drinking decisions, and “enhanced” the sanctions in the code of conduct, according to Smith.
The sanctions added in recent years include having students who live off-campus and get into trouble off-campus also go through the university judiciary system, notifying parents of students under the age of 21 if their kids caught with alcohol, and having students caught with alcohol take intervention programs, he said. The university also created the requirement that incoming students complete an on-line alcohol education course, Smith said.
OU STUDENT Will Klatt, who finished in second place in the Student Senate president race last year and is active with the Students Defending Students group on campus, said in an e-mail interview Wednesday that he is impressed that the other college presidents want to see the drinking age examined.
“At Ohio University, our administrators seem more interested in creating the illusion that alcohol isn’t a problem on campus,” he wrote. “It’s much easier to slap harsher penalties for drinking than it is to stand up and say, ‘Hey, our current laws are not adequately addressing the purpose of the law, to cut down on drunk-driving, nor does it sit with the reality that most students consume alcohol. Let’s not criminalize the behavior; let’s build a society where our culture is out in the open, so that we can reinforce responsible decisions and responsible drinking.”
He added that lowering the drinking age would not solve alcoholism among college students, but said it would bring the laws up to date with reality.
“Students drink, and no law, no cop, no administrator is capable of stopping that reality,” Klatt said. “I think lowering the drinking age would over time eliminate much of the binge-drinking culture; however, that’s a cultural shift and might take a couple years to see such a policy change create the results they are looking for.”
Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl said he grew up at a time when those between 18-21 could drink low-alcohol beer, so he doesn’t have much of a problem with the idea of lowering the drinking age.
When the drinking age was increased to 21, it pushed all of the former large festival/parties on campus that served alcohol into the neighborhoods, he added. Those parties, such as Palmerfest and Highfest, and the FiveFest outside of the city limits, create new problems for the city Police Department to deal with, he added.
Wiehl said he wonders if the university would take any of the parties back on campus if the drinking age were lowered back to 18.
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