If anyone out there is lying awake at night, wondering whether those little undergraduate darlings at UVA are imbibing in a few nips of Grandpa’s cough medicine, he is encouraged to get out of bed and stroll down Rugby Road during the throws of rush week. As anyone knows who has seen an ad for the new movie College, the question is not whether underage undergrads are drinking, but how much.
Some university presidents are finally talking seriously and realistically about the issue of underage drinking at colleges. About 130 of them have signed onto what they are calling the Amethyst Initiative, proposing to lower the legal drinking age to 18. The argument is that they can tackle binge drinking if they acknowledge the fact of alcohol consumption on campus.
In his speech last week to the parents of incoming freshmen, UVA President John Casteen publicly weighed in on the issue for the first time, though he said that he still hadn’t made up his mind about whether to sign on to the initiative.
“One of the problems with the debate is that both sides are somewhat hyperbolic,” said Casteen, pointing out that traffic deaths involving young people and alcohol have gone down. He also noted that in Europe the drinking age can be as low as 14 in some countries.
“Those are also cultures in which drunkenness is looked down on, where in our culture, frankly, it’s not,” he said. “In France, in England, in Italy, drunks are considered seriously damaged people, and there is not a history of playful acceptance of drunkenness as a way of life.”
Signatories to the Amethyst Initiative include the presidents of Dartmouth College, Duke University, Hampden-Sydney College, Washington and Lee University, Johns Hopkins University, Ohio State University and the University of Maryland.
“I fear sometimes that part of the motive here is to make the lives of college deans and dorm head residents, and so on, easier,” said Casteen. “I don’t think that’s the point. But I’m also perfectly willing to be persuaded by good evidence.”
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