There needs to be a conversation about the reality of drinking at universities.
Let's stop pretending.
Colleges, and particularly Ohio University, provide the opportunity for incredible learning, growth and discovery, but like any place they hold their fair share of dangers. Sexual assault, rising tuition, underfunded psychological services and a lack of minority representation on campuses are among a laundry list of problems that plague institutions of higher education. However, today I am writing about a different, and probably less significant problem, namely the legal drinking age.
Let’s start with a little history. Before the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, states could choose to set their own legal drinking age, leading to different drinking ages for different states. Before 1984, New York State’s drinking age was 18, while right next door in Pennsylvania the drinking age was 21. Like with every law preventing the youth from getting intoxicated, young Americans worked around the law. In this case by driving across state lines, and often driving back, leading to death and tragic injuries from drunk driving. This led to the creation of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving that successfully got Congress to force states to adopt 21 as the legal drinking age by withholding highway funding unless the states complied. All in all, a great solution to the high numbers of drunk driving deaths, yet as every university student, parent and administrator know, it is not incredibly difficult to skirt the law.
From fake IDs, benevolent peers over 21, to the bars and stores that every student knows "usually" forget to card, or the weekends when the moms and dads come to town, it is incredibly easy to break the law. Even though it is easy to drink underage, it is still breaking the law, and there are consequences for doing so.
When something as normalized in society as underage drinking puts folks in violation of the law, they take their activities behind closed doors, and that’s when things really become unsafe. Students are afraid to ask for help when a friend has over consumed. There are often no adults around and no one who can set an example of healthy consumption (though Moms Weekend provides plenty of evidence to the contrary), and many are left even more vulnerable to sexual assault. Students certainly drink a lot at the bars, but there is greater social pressure to not be the drunk at the bar, stumbling around or throwing up.
There are numerous examples of countries around the world that have a legal drinking age of 18, and have a much safer drinking culture that has not normalized binge drinking. Making it legal to buy liquor at the store at 18 might not be the right move for the U.S. right now, but maybe making it legal for adults who are 18 to go to the bars is. Regardless, there needs to be a conversation about the reality of drinking at universities. If you can decide to put yourself in $80,000 of debt to get a degree, you will probably need a drink.
Ben Mathes is a senior studying political science at Ohio University.
