McCardell campaign generates opposition

Author: Kathryn Flagg

"Welcome to World Headquarters, the nerve center." John M. McCardell, Jr. - professor of History and president emeritus of Middlebury College - is a familiar fixture on the College's campus. But this jovial pronouncement was offered in a high-ceilinged, one-room office just off of Main Street, where McCardell is hard at work as director of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that he launched last February. "You can just feel the pulse," he said with a laugh.

The office - located in downtown Middlebury and a brisk 10-minute walk from the center of the College's campus - is a modest affair. A few desks and mismatched file cabinets huddle near the windows, and the small conference table in the center of the room is cluttered with press releases and newspaper clippings. Grace Kronenberg '06 and Amanda Goodwin '07, assistants to the director, pulled their chairs up to the table.

Modest though it may appear, this three-person, storefront operation is the hub of a blossoming grassroots movement to promote public debate about alcohol use in America. In claiming that a lower minimum drinking age, coupled with a graduated licensing program for underage drinkers, would reduce the amount of alcohol-related deaths in the country, Choose Responsibility has sparked considerable interest and consternation.

"This isn't just about drunk driving,"said McCardell. It's about the toll alcohol takes on young lives, and the fact that many young lives are being lost to alcohol off the highway. That will resonate. That needs to be explained, and proponents of Legal Age 21 can't explain that."

The fledgling organization, whose Web site went live last April, was launched into the limelight this month after Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the American Medical Association (AMA) and other organizations announced on Oct. 9 the formation of a coalition to support Legal Age 21. The coalition, succinctly dubbed Support 21, boasts a supporting array of well-known and respected organizations including the Governors Highway Safety Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association and the National Safety Council.

In a small office perched in the center of Middlebury's quietly charming town center, though, McCardell and his assistants seem undeterred by the coalition's efforts. "Our gestation period is over," said McCardell of the nine-month-old effort. "We've emerged."

Support 21 rallies in response

Choose Responsibility's very emergence sparked, at least in part, the Oct. 9 press conference, during which MADD and other organizations unveiled the Support 21 coalition and its extensive list of health and safety group affiliates.

"The coalition came together to really present the science about 21," said Misty Moyse, a spokesperson for MADD, in an interview with The Middlebury Campus. "The press announcement was the cornerstone of our efforts."

According to Moyse, the coalition intends to follow this announcement with a series of events and programs, though she admitted that the events will be designed on a "case-by-case, as-needed basis."

The coalition was formed in part, Moyse said, in response to Choose Responsibility, but came about largely because of renewed media attention to the issue of underage drinking. Moyse - and MADD's Oct. 9 press release - stressed the importance of studies that

"We know, based on high quality data, that about 1,000 lives are being saved [each year] by 21," said Moyse. "Substantial research took place. This isn't a new thing. We know it saves lives."

The Support 21 press release cited the approximately 50 peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of a higher minimum drinking age in reducing alcohol-related traffic fatalities, and also called attention to a Gallup poll in which 77 percent of Americans said they would oppose a federal law that would lower the drinking age in all states to 18.

Stepping into the spotlight

According to McCardell, Kronenberg and Goodwin, though, the press conference only reiterated well-known talking points championed by MADD.

"You can only get the press together to announce that the sun is coming up in the east so many times," said McCardell.

For the staffers at Choose Responsibility, the coalition's launch seems intimately tied to their own efforts.

"When asked directly why this issue, why now, they wouldn't say, 'Because Choose Responsibility exists,'" said Kronenberg, who attended the press conference, "but they did everything but say that."

"They are annoyed, irritated, perturbed about us existing," she continued, "but very assured of their position. They're a $55 million-a-year organization that's basically invincible and has a huge infrastructure across the country of volunteers and regional chapters. I don't think they see any threat from us, but with each Parade article, with each MSNBC article, with each Chronicle of Higher Education article, they get more and more annoyed."

In the end, though, the conference generated an unprecedented amount of publicity for Choose Responsibility. In the wake of the event the organization saw an upsurge in Web hits, generating the most traffic the organization's Web site had ever seen in any given week. While the organization and its proposals have already been featured in dozens of national, local and student newspapers and have appeared online and on television, last week's attention signaled fresh progress in the organization's public outreach campaign.

"If the purpose of that event was to make us go away, it didn't work," said McCardell. "If their goal was to lay the issue to rest, they didn't - unintentionally, but then of course they're famous for unintended consequences for what they do."

The future of the fledging nonprofit

As the organization nears the end of its inaugural year, McCardell is looking to the future.

"We've got enough support and enough personnel and enough connections to continue to be an irritant indefinitely," he said. "But our role isn't to be an irritant. Our role is to get this thing changed, and for that to happen clearly we're going to have to grow beyond what we are now.

"If we're still three people operating out of a second story storefront in Vermont this time next year, we will have fallen short of our own expectations," he continued.

Education about the reality of underage drinking in the United States is, he believes, the biggest task facing the organization at this time, though he envisions an advocacy arm for the nonprofit at some point in the future.

For now, Choose Responsibility seems unconcerned about the efforts of MADD and the Support 21 coalition to reignite support for the Legal Age 21.

"The more we focus on MADD, the more frustrated and less successful we're going to be," said McCardell. "But there is a vast swath of the American public whose minds, I think, are open, and who, when they hear about us, will not reflexively pre-judge us."

The organization is already making significant strides in its efforts to educate the public.

"We're being recognized as a legitimate voice," said Kronenberg, pointing to invitations to numerous conferences and events as evidence that the group has assumed a new position in the discussion about underage drinking in America.

"We can't boast an array of prominent allies yet," said McCardell, "but I would hope that 12 months from now we would have if not organizations, at least prominent individuals."

Support 21 seems, however, poised to keep its eye on this young, small enterprise tucked away in Vermont.

"Holy cow," Charles A. Hurley, MADD's chief executive officer, told Parade Magazine in an article published about Choose Responsibility in August. "This literally involves life and
death. Life-and-death issues of kids are really too important for off-the-cuff musings."

For McCardell, though, the debate about underage drinking is a complicated topic, one that cannot be boiled down to blanket assertions.

"It's all about education," he said. "It's all about restraint and moderation, and it's all about public policies that discourage rather than encourage the very sort of reckless drinking that damages the brain."