Vermont youth push to drink sooner

Author: Andrea Glaessner

The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) kicked off its campaign to lower the drinking age from 21- to 18-years-old in Vermont with a press conference on March 29. This event commenced the group's two-week public education campaign in which the NYRA will visit every college campus in the state in hopes of enlightening fellow young people about their cause and the issues surrounding alcohol consumption by minors.

From the end of Prohibition in 1933 until the National Minimum Drinking Act in 1984, drinking ages were determined by individual states. Most states set the drinking age at 21 years of age, but several others lowered the age to 18-years-old for the purchase of beer. From 1970 through 1975, nearly all states lowered their legal drinking ages, usually from 21 to 18. The general sentiment of the American public was rooted in the argument that if 18-year-olds were required to fight and die in a foreign war (specifically the Vietnam War) then they should be allowed the privilege of drinking alcohol.

But after the war, public sentiment changed. Alex Koroknay-Palicz, NYRA's 23-year-old president, said, "the baby boomers were aging and the freedoms which they had sought for themselves no longer seemed important when they involved someone else."

In 1984, due to the new conservativism facilitated by the Reagan administration, the impact of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and MADD President Cindy Lightner's extensive activism, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was passed. The actual bill required that "all States raise their minimum drinking age to 21 within 2 years or lose a portion of their Federal-aid highway funds." It also stated that government officials "encourage states, through incentive grant programs, to pass mandatory sentencing laws to combat drunk driving."

According to Koroknay-Palicz, "The portion of the Federal-aid highway funds that would be lost if the state didn't comply amounted to five percent in the third year and 10 percent in the fourth year." Interestingly, Koroknay-Palicz noted, "Reagan had initially threatened to veto the bill, citing that the provisions that punished states which didn't comply were an infringement upon states' rights. Reagan later changed from opposition to support, formally announcing his decision on June 13, 1984."

Despite the 1984 act, members of NYRA are hopeful that the drinking age may be lowered back to 18. In related news, Middlebury College President Emeritus John M. McCardell, Jr. recently criticized the current drinking age in a Sept. 13, 2004 New York Times op-ed entitled, "What Your College President Didn't Tell You."

In his editorial, McCardell emphasized the correlation between a higher drinking age and the phenomenon of binge drinking. McCardell wrote, "To lawmakers: the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law. It is astonishing that college students have thus far acquiesced in so egregious an abridgment of the age of majority. Unfortunately, this acquiescence has taken the form of binge drinking. Campuses have become, depending on the enthusiasm of local law enforcement, either arms of the law or havens from the law. Neither state is desirable."

Karen Guttentag, assistant dean of student affairs, agreed with McCardell on the issue of binge drinking, specifically the widespread popularity of the practice known as of "pre-gaming." According to Guttentag, the fad, which is typified by drinking games and considerable beer chugging, comes out of the fact that "students are taking the most expedient route to drunkenness because they aren't allowed to drink in public."

Guttentag also expressed that the taboo of underage drinking in our culture leads to negligence, and that many minors have died from alcohol poisoning simply because their friends were too scared to get help. Guttentag said, "Lowering the drinking age would help eliminate the 'badge of adulthood' to drink excessively by eliminating some of the allure from drinking as a rite of passage."

In his editorial, McCardell also advanced the argument that an educational institution has a responsibility to educate its students on appropriate alcohol consumption. He asked, "Would we expect a student who has been denied access to oil paint to graduate with an ability to paint a portrait in oil? Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open."

In preemptive response to the argument that minors are less experienced and therefore more dangerous behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol than a 21-year-old, McCardell said, "And please - hold your fire about drunken driving. I am a charter member of Presidents Against Drunk Driving. This has nothing to do with drunken driving. If it did, we'd raise the driving age to 21. That would surely solve the problem." McCardell wrote that college students should fight against this breach of liberty.

Although the NYRA would like to see college students actively engaging in policy change, Guttentag offered an interesting alternative. Rather than jump on the bandwagon with activist groups to immediately change legislation, Guttentag said that she would like to see students on the Middlebury campus engaging in dialogue with other students and faculty members about underage drinking with an educational intent rather than one of legislative action.

"Middlebury can contribute a lot to the politics of the issue," said Guttentag. "[Students] should work on creating venues on campus which facilitate discussion and research about the drinking age with a goal of understanding, not to change a policy." Guttentag even suggested the idea of curricular infusion, in which various issues (such as the drinking age) would be discussed in the classroom, where the many fields of academia could offer a perspective on the role of alcohol in society.