The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 9/11/08 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: Greg Townsend Patrons wait outside the Emerson bookstore to get into Gypsy Bar.

Media Credit: Greg Townsend Not-so-hidden boozing: 21+ drinkers wait outside the bars on Boylston Place.

The symbols of the college social life are the Solo cup, the Jon Belushi-esque cry of a significantly slurred “Toga” and stumbling into a lecture class while still dressed in Care Bear pajamas.

However, as most students know, drinking is deliciously illegal until the age of 21. The Amethyst Initiative, started in mid-July by former president of Middlebury College John McCardell and Chooseresponsibility.org, is a petition pushing to lower the drinking age to 18. The group is doing so by garnering support from the presidents and chancellors of major colleges across the country.

Emerson’s president, Jacqueline Liebergott, intends to join the other college leaders in signing the Amethyst Initiative. She agrees with lowering the minimum drinking age to 18, which she said was the age where teens become adults.

“I think the amount of drinking on the Emerson campus is similar to the amount of drinking on most urban campuses,” she said. “Handling alcohol appropriately is an issue across the country. I think people will drink more responsibly [with a lower drinking age].”

Advocates at the Amethyst Initiative use the same argument that has spilled from the lips of drunken freshmen for years: “If I can vote and go to war, why can’t I get a beer after class?” The initiative is looking at repealing the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which enforced a 10 percent penalty on any state’s federal highway funding if they set the minimum drinking age below 21.

There are currently 130 signatures on the petition from college leaders, all of whom support Amethyst and the lowering of the drinking age.

“We want to keep gathering signatures and we want to keep the debates going on,” McCardell said. “Next year the highway bill is up for renegotiation and the penalty really should go. It really is an obstacle to the discussion.”

Despite its apparent popularity in academia, the petition has met resistance from Mothers Against Drunk Driving who say lowering the age will not make students conscientious about how much they consume and what they do afterward. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis, the minimum drinking age law saved 890 lives in 2006 across the nation.

“I’m not sure that how lowering the system and educating them will help,” said David Deiuliis, a spokesperson for MADD. “There’s a really good chance that early onset alcoholism will occur in high school students. ‘Underground drinking’ will not be driven above ground and make students into responsible drinkers.”

College leaders want to explore alternatives to the current blanket age limit in hopes that it will take drinking into a more carefully regulated situation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by underage drinkers comes in the form of binge drinking. At the collegiate epicenter of Boston, it is no surprise that heads of several of the colleges in the city have signed the petition and expressed their concern about their students hitting the sauce.

“There is such a high population of college students in Boston. You have to assume that there is a lot of clandestine drinking,” McCardell said.

Students’ stealthy sipping is not an international problem. Freshman Eirin Strickland spent eight years living in Europe where the drinking age was 16 for beer and wine and 18 for all liquors.

“It’s always around even when you’re younger, and it’s much more relaxed and there is less abuse of it,” said the film production major. “It is ridiculous to have such highly enforced laws for people who are trying to make the transition into college and responsibility when they are not given the chance to be responsible with their own alcohol consumption.”

The Boston-based concern brought Chancellor Robert Holub from University of Massachusetts Amherst into the discussion. He said it is the responsibility of the educational system to inform their students about the proper use of alcohol.

“My view on this is that underage drinking is a problem and any better messages or policies are something that we need to investigate. I don’t feel that UMass Amherst has a more serious problem than other schools,” Holub said. “It’s all colleges. That’s why there are more than 100 signatures [on the initiative].”

Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow, said most colleges have taken a back seat to the issue of underage binge drinking and that a change in the rules could make a difference.

“I do not think the current policy is working.  We need a national conversation about how we can do better.  I believe dangerous drinking is a problem on virtually every college campus I have ever visited,” Bacow said. “To date, the vast majority of feedback I have received regarding my support for this initiative has been supportive.”

However, the future and the possibility of the bill being changed seems slim, even to the organizers.

“It’s a long shot, but you know what? There used to be a song about the lottery that says you have to play to win,” McCardell said. “This is viral in a way that I have never imagined. Local reporters have picked it up and now the schools have as well. How can you look at that reaction and say that it is a settled matter?  I am naive enough to believe that if the discussion continues there will be change.”

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