Barbara Ortutay Ortutay is a former news
editor and current editor in chief of Tenpercent. E-mail her at
bortutay@media.ucla.edu.
Click Here for more articles by Barbara Ortutay
I’ll always remember my first time. I was 10 years old,
and my barely legal babysitter poured half an inch of champagne in
two glasses and handed it to my friend and I. Being New
Year’s Eve, I held my breath and swallowed, feeling very
grown up. It tasted much sweeter than I expected, and I held out my
glass again: “I want more.” She laughed and refilled
it, and in a little while my friend and I were running around the
house giggling and spinning and falling down on a big, scratchy
rug.
That was underage drinking ““ a far cry from the
“underage drinking” of college freshmen using fake IDs
to get into a bar. Unfortunately, 18- to 20-year-olds have little
political clout, and in 1984 Congress and then-President Ronald
Reagan bowed to political pressure and enacted the National Minimum
Age Drinking Act, which required states to increase the age people
can purchase alcohol to 21 years or risk losing federal
funding.
Since then, even serious discussion of lowering the drinking age
to 18 seems taboo, and because politicians rarely take bar-hopping,
beer guzzling college students seriously, it is unlikely that this
will change. Last week, an otherwise comprehensive study by the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism on college
drinking habits still overwhelmingly called for a stronger
enforcement of minimum age laws in order to prevent drunk driving
and other reckless behavior among young people.
The study correctly emphasizes the necessity to teach students
moderate and responsible drinking habits. It’s also right in
calling for drunk driving prevention through innovative programs
such as nightly shuttle services around colleges, as well as
proposing that bars around colleges serve more food later into the
night and eliminate “last call” announcements. But the
NIAAA is wrong in asking for a stronger enforcement of unfair and
ineffective underage drinking laws.
Curbing the rights of young people is a common and politically
correct way to boost political popularity, “keep our streets
safe” and gain extra votes during election year. Children
must be protected goes the logic, but society must also be
protected from them. In California, Proposition 21 was passed by
voters and recently upheld by courts, allowing 14-year-olds to be
tried as adults. It would be another seven years for a person who
is seen as old enough to be responsible and be punished for
criminal acts as an adult before they can buy a beer (not to
mention another four before they could actually vote in an election
that decides their fate).
Regardless, an 18-year-old is not a child by any standard other
than the Minimum Age Drinking Act. At an age where someone can die
for their country, be executed, vote and get married, it is a
strange anomaly to deny them the simple act of ordering a glass of
wine with dinner. Making the consumption of alcohol the final step
to adulthood also creates an unnecessary cloud of mystery around
drinking.
By the time I got to college, alcohol had lost its forbidden
appeal for me: I partied it out of my system in high school.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to see a lot of my classmates go
to their first party, throw up and, of course, make a drunken fool
of themselves for the first time. Their naïveté, however,
was somewhat frightening. I thought everyone knew that when someone
passes out you turn them on their side and monitor their breathing,
that you watch out for your friends and never leave them alone, and
that you take care of a sick person even if you don’t know
them. You also don’t drink and drive, and you don’t
have sex with a half-unconscious person. No means no, whether it
comes to sex or another beer. Common sense, isn’t it?
Apparently not. The NIAAA study found that, on average, four
students die each day due to alcohol-related accidents. An
overwhelming number of these deaths is a result of drunk driving.
The study also found that nearly 200 students a year are raped or
sexually assaulted after drinking, and about 400,000 college
students reported having unprotected sex after consuming
alcohol.
It is true that many college students exercise careless
irresponsibility when it comes to drinking and, as the study
recommends, university administrators should work with students and
the surrounding community to make drinking safer for everyone. This
includes more than creative ad campaigns and scare tactics about
the dangers of alcohol. Students need recreational outlets other
than excessive alcohol consumption. Concerts, pool halls and dance
clubs allow people to consume alcohol more moderately than in a bar
where the sole purpose of entering is to get drunk.
The culture of binge drinking that is prevalent at UCLA could
also potentially be curbed by giving students moderate access to
alcohol. It would be hard to imagine Kerckhoff Coffee House turning
into a rowdy college bar even if it were to serve beer and wine (as
does Stanford University’s coffee shop). Much of the reason
younger students drink excessively is because of UCLA’s party
culture: people drink to get as drunk as possible and do not know
to consume alcohol in moderate amounts.
Keeping the drinking age at 21 instead of changing it to 18,
however, perpetuates irresponsibility by treating college students
like children. Is it really a surprise then, that we act the way we
do?