FOCUS: COLLEGE DRINKING
Local college officials join the debate over push to lower the drinking age
Young adults for years have questioned the rationale that 18 was old enough to vote and fight wars, but not old enough to drink a few beers.
These days, that position has gained some unlikely supporters.
College presidents from more than 100 schools around the United States went public last month with a campaign to provoke a national debate about lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.
And spark debate it has. “I’m not sure what lowering the age is supposed to achieve,” said Sister Denise Roche, president of D’Youville College. “It’s not going to cut down on the drinking.”
But over at Canisius College, the Rev. Vincent Cooke has a different opinion.
“My personal feeling is that we are better off if we had students over 18 able to drink on campus where we can supervise it, learn when there are problems and then get help for people,” said Cooke, Canisius president.
“Students go off campus, drink too much, then come back late at night,” Cooke said. “It creates all sorts of problems for them — and the college.”
At the crux of the debate is a growing concern about binge drinking — young people downing four, five or more alcoholic beverages in a couple of hours — leading to a drunkenness that’s fueling myriad troubles on and off campus.
“You have a problem with vandalism, it’s related to alcohol,” said Dennis Black, vice president of student affairs at the University at Buffalo. “You have a problem with domestic violence, it’s related to alcohol. If you have a problem with attendance and poor performance, it’s linked to alcohol.”
While beer and booze have long been part of the college experience, Black is one who believes that excessive drinking among young people is as prevalent as ever.
“It doesn’t appear to be getting worse,” said the Rev. Joseph Levesque, president of Niagara University, “but it doesn’t appear to be getting better, either.”
Kathleen Parks, a senior research scientist at UB’s Research Institute on Addictions, doesn’t know if it’s getting worse, either, but believes there’s more awareness of the serious consequences of binge drinking. She senses a culture shift on the issue, similar to what happened with drunken driving.
“It’s no longer just, ‘Hey, this is a rite of passage. Kids get drunk,’ ” Parks said. “No, kids shouldn’t get drunk to where they’re ending up in comas and ending up in the emergency room.”
“Obviously, the consumption of alcohol is a problem. It’s a problem at practically every college in the country,” Cooke said. “The question is the best way to address it.”
A call for debate
That’s where the Amethyst Initiative comes in.
The movement by 130 college presidents — including the leaders at Duke, Syracuse, Colgate and Dartmouth — doesn’t directly call for a younger drinking age but encourages lawmakers to start a serious debate.
A main argument is that the 21- year-old drinking age isn’t working and actually fosters a dangerous culture of alcohol excess among young people.
Opponents, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, say that’s nonsense and cite studies showing the positives of the current law, like a drop in fatal car crashes.
In fact, no local presidents have signed on to the Amethyst Initiative.
At this point, Roche, at D’Youville, wouldn’t be in favor of lowering the drinking age.
“I don’t think it would help kids,” Roche said, “and I don’t think it would prevent overdrinking.”
Fredonia State College President Dennis Hefner concurred.
“It’s up to the colleges and universities to continue their efforts to educate students about the dangers associated with binge drinking,” Hefner said.
Levesque, at Niagara, expressed similar sentiments.
In fact, Niagara is among the colleges that created a mandatory freshman seminar to educate students about the effects of alcohol.
“They’re going to make their own personal choice,” said Tim Osberg, a psychology professor, who designed the course, “but we’re telling them, ‘Here’s what you need to know and the legal consequences.’ ”
While Cooke isn’t advocating for a lower drinking age, his personal opinion leans that way.
“We learned back in the ’20s [that] prohibition doesn’t work,” Cooke said. “You have to work with the problem by
educating people properly, and this is one of the areas we take a certain responsibility.”
Students see the logic
Over in the University Heights neighborhood — known for its large concentration of students, parties and problems with young drinkers — it’s no surprise to find many students who agree with the logic of the Amethyst Initiative.
Underage drinkers often go overboard because they’re not allowed to drink, said Mark Benjamin, a UB junior. “They don’t experience it as much, so they come to campus and start chugging beers,” said Benjamin,
21. “You lower the drinking age, I think it would make people relax a bit more.”
At 18, you’re old enough to make your own decisions, said Owen Mac- Donald, 21, a UB senior.
“There is a great deal of binge drinking,” MacDonald said, “but I also know a lot of people who drink one or two and are fine with that.”
UB hasn’t taken a public stance on the Amethyst Initiative, but President John Simpson has been looking closer at the research on the topic, Black said.
Personally, Black thinks colleges, in general, handled alcohol responsibly when the drinking age was 18, and he welcomes more study.
While there will be no consensus on a drinking age, college presidents admit they welcome the public debate.
Since the federal government in 1984 mandated that states raise the drinking age to 21, colleges have grappled with the dilemma of having some students who are allowed to drink alcohol and others who aren’t.
Sister Margaret Carney, president at St. Bonaventure University, takes more of a middle ground.
“At this moment in time, I feel I don’t have enough evidence to advocate for a general reduction of the drinking age,” she said.
“However,” she said, “I do think that some allowance can be made, and ought to be made, for colleges being able to serve students at age 18 on campus in certain circumstances.”
The question is whether there’s really support for lowering the drinking age, or if the topic will just fade away.
“I hope not,” Black said. “I think it’s important to decide whether [21] has worked, and whether there are other things we could be doing. Simply letting the debate die would not be responsible.”
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