My distinguished colleague Zachary Gottlieb '10 recently wrote about Dartmouth as a protective parental figure, asking "When does this tireless parent teach us to fend for ourselves?" ("Dartmouth Man Needs a Maid," Sept. 24). If President Wright were truly our father, he would be a model parent -- brave enough to trust his children to learn from their mistakes. We should be proud of his work with the Amethyst Initiative, the controversial group of college presidents that has provoked renewed interest in a discussion about lowering the drinking age. As the only Ivy League president supporting the Initiative, Wright has proved courageous enough to make public his position on an issue that has no easy answers.
Sam Buntz '11 discussed his objection to Mothers Against Drunk Driving's efforts to suppress the Amethyst Initiative ("A MADD Initiative?" Sept. 25). I was disappointed that Buntz seems to be guilty of the same fault shared by many -- including MADD -- who oppose the Initiative. He writes about "the better half of human nature" turning against binge-drinking culture, but he condemns Dartmouth's social scene as composed mostly of "nihilistic" binges. Furthermore, Buntz doubts that changing laws concerning alcohol would change what Dostoevsky would call Dartmouth students' "fatal fantastic element."
I prefer a more optimistic, helpful approach to addressing the complicated problem of American college-student binge drinking. Many opponents of the Initiative have painted 18- to 21-year-old college students as rowdy, non-thinking heavy drinkers who choose to drive drunk -- a New York Times editorial said, "The 21-year-old floor is not the problem. It is the culture of drinking at school." This is unproductive. Instead of implying that we must force change upon the culture (which sounds both impossible and sinister), we must treat college students as smart human beings with the capacity to make choices in order to effectively address drinking-related problems.
Preemptive strategies that educate rather than preach to youth about other serious issues have become mainstream. A self-proclaimed "Princeton U Mom" posted a comment about Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman's refusal to join the Amethyst Initiative ("Tilghman will not sign petition to lower drinking age," The Daily Princetonian, Sept. 23); she compared learning to drink responsibly to learning to make choices about sex and religion. In the same way that teaching abstinence until marriage does not educate an individual about safe sex, sexual violence and contraception, legislating abstinence from alcohol until age 21 will do nothing to curb binge drinking among 22-year-olds.
Even as they comply with national and state law, the college presidents of the Amethyst Initiative have decided not to ignore the fact that a gigantic number of their underage students consume alcohol at school. They have required students to complete programs like AlcoholEdu -- attempts to teach responsible drinking that have not helped much. Instead of treating huge portions of their student bodies as evidence of the moral degradation of American youth, these leaders have dared to assert their wish to treat all college students as adults -- from the moment we matriculate, rather than from the arbitrarily magical moments of each of our 21st birthdays. In its most extreme form, this means lowering the drinking age to 18, but President Wright does not expect this to happen any time soon. Even so, he is participating in an important dialogue.
As Buntz points out, alcohol is part of many cultures. Whether or not it plays a positive role in the culture of college seniors and some college juniors, the law allows alcohol to exist in that culture. It is impossible to separate the underage from the of-age into two separate college cultures; first of all, that would mean I, age 20, would have to wait until April to hang out with an increasing number of my friends, and second of all, that would completely segregate the unified community that every college aims for.
Being the parent of 4,000-plus 18- to 22-year-olds is an extremely hard job. All college presidents must turn a somewhat blind eye to underage drinking on their campuses. The pragmatic presidents, however, know that to publicly voice their belief that their students are ready to be treated like adults is worth the criticism they have brought upon themselves. MADD, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge that college-age "children" benefit from being sheltered far less than from the grown-up dialogue adopted by the Initiative. Dartmouth students may not change their drinking habits right away, but following a president who engages us in a dialogue about drinking can only help us grow up in preparation for the day when we are full legal adults.
