<p>Just off the top of my head: age limits on working as an air traffic controller; maximum age limitations for entering into a federal law enforcement career and forced retirement; buying tickets to R rated movies; playing sports in high school; being elected as a representative, senator, or president; getting married; being eligible to file an age discrimination complaint with EEOC.</p>
<p>I believe professional licensing in certain occupations (ie: medical doctor).</p>
<p>Thank you for the other examples (btw, I was inquiring about adults, tsdad, I think the law is pretty clear that minors can be regulated due to their presumed incompetency). I wonder whether any of those examples have ever been challenged in a court of law. Obviously, there must be a very compelling reason, supported by evidence, in order to discriminate based on age.</p>
<p>Driving ages and drinking ages are different in Europe so it’s hard to compare. In Germany you can’t drive till you’re 17 other European countries won’t let you drive till you are 18. In Germany and many other countries you can drink anything but hard liquor as long as you are with a “legal guardian” at any age. Hard liquor at 18 is pretty typical. Some countries restrict purchase, but not drinking.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Give me a break…</p>
<p>Maybe they just didn’t want to be lectured during a commencement address.</p>
<p>As for drunk driving - it’s going to be to where it’s too expensive for 18-21 college kids to be driving anyway. </p>
<p>Strictly non scientific, but, I see a dramatic decrease in the numbers of cars that are going to be sent to colleges with kids - moms and dads aren’t going to be able to pay the tuition AND the gas bill…;)</p>
<p>“Again, mini–I’d love to hear about programs that other college presidents have initiated that have have had profound impacts on underage drinking on their campuses.”</p>
<p>I don’t have time to post them all now, but if you google BASICS, Alan Marlatt, Project We Can, Social Norms Marketing, you’ll find all kids of stuff that has proven effective in my own state and elsewhere. You might also want to take a look at [Journal</a> of Studies on Alcohol](<a href=“http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/SupportingResearch/journalStudiesAlcohol.aspx]Journal”>http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/SupportingResearch/journalStudiesAlcohol.aspx), specifically Part II.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What about Canada?</p>
<p>There hasn’t been an agency in Canada that has been tracking this (college drinking) carefully over time, though there is an institute in Toronto. What we know from previous surveys is that there seem to be wide variations by province, with some rates higher (and occasionally far higher) than in the U.S. (especially in the west as I remember), and some lower (Nova Scotia).</p>
<p>But among 12th graders, both alcohol use, heavy alcohol use, and binge drinking are far, far higher in British Columbia and Ontario than they are in my state.</p>
<p>[The</a> Perils of Binge Drinking](<a href=“http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2005/09/drinking.php]The”>http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2005/09/drinking.php)</p>
<p>"• In Ontario, 83 percent of Grade 12 students drink, and 45 percent have had at least one episode of binge drinking in the previous four weeks, according to the 2003 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey. While the percentage of students binge drinking increases with each grade, the biggest single increase —from eight to 24 percent—occurs between Grades 8 and 9. “That jump tells us that a significant number of kids are starting really young,” says Edward Adlaf, coauthor of the study. </p>
<p>• A 2003 survey of British Columbia high-school students conducted by the McCreary Centre Society found that 46 percent of males and 43 percent of females in high school who admitted to drinking had engaged in binge drinking in the previous month, a rate that is among the highest in Canada and unchanged since 1998.</p>
<p>• Binge drinking is particularly worrisome on university and college campuses in Canada and the United States. Four surveys of 120 U.S. campuses over the last decade found that 44 percent of students admitted to an episode of binge drinking in the two weeks prior to the survey, a rate that has remained unchanged for a decade. The 2000 Canadian Campus Survey found similar results, with 63 percent of students reporting consuming five or more drinks in a single sitting in the previous year. The Canadian study concluded that campuses are a “risky milieu for hazardous drinking.” </p>
<p>Julian at McGill agrees. “It doesn’t matter where you go in Canada. On most campuses there’s a focus on ‘partying’—which means getting drunk.”</p>
<p>The “takeaway”, if there is one, is that legal drinking - for 12th graders (age 18) means more binge and dangerous drinking, not less. (This is the same thing we see in Northern Europe.)</p>
<p>Another exception to the age 21 as an adult would be the age 24 for financial independence for college purposes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>True, but I believe that the presumption of dependence is rebuttable. There are no exceptions for drinking alcohol under the age of 21, that I am aware of.</p>
<p>tsdad, I was at UW when the age was 18 and I seriously doubt there was a significant difference in drinking except that the house party was much less common and the bars were more crowded Friday and Saturday nights. Also use of “light drugs” (pot/hash) was pretty common too. All is does is force the activity more underground. The worst loss was the decline of live music clubs which are not surviving with the 21 age. There was far less heavy drinking at the music clubs over the bars.</p>
<p>Barrons:</p>
<p>Student drinking is creating a financial burden on both the university and the city because of the needed educational programs and necessity for extra policing both by UWPD and MPD. The students are bearing an even heavier burden. Significant amounts of crime in the State St. policing area is directly related to alcohol. The heaviest burden is borne by young women in terms of non-stranger assaults and dangerous behavior on their part.</p>
<p>I believe that there is limit on what Madison and the university can do about binge and underage drinking. The city’s approach is to make legal violations very expensive. But because there is such a strong alcohol culture in the state young people come to Madison prepared to drink and prepared to drink heavily because that’s what their families do. What is needed is a change in the state’s culture.</p>
<p>And btw, there was a change to allow under 21s to go into the bars to hear musical performances.</p>
<p>Wow. So many of us went to college when the drinking age was 18 and report a different experience than the current scene. I went to school that regularly ends up on top 10 party school lists. Yeah, there was a fair amount of binge drinking. But no hospitalizations and no deaths. Not in all of my four years. So what’s going on?? What is causing this “extreme” drinking? Is it possibly related to the fact that drinking is now underground or viewed as forbidden fruit? </p>
<p>Mini, you mentioned social norms marketing. I’m familiar with it - kids think that other kids drink more than they really do - so let’s advertise the true story and that will bring the drinking rate down. Ummm…no…doesn’t work when the drinking rate is high…like it is in many schools… the schools that need a big change.
So, we’ve run the drinkers off campus, drinking away from supervision, and we’re arresting kids who drink…responsibly or not.
AND… we put college presidents in a bind since they really can’t teach responsible drinking to most of their students because it’s illegal to drink even one beer.
I like that there is some “out of the box” thinking going on with respect to this problem. And who could dispute that there’s a problem here? Hospitalizations, deaths, blackouts. And publications like Princeton Review make it sound like it’s one big party…</p>
<p>I admit that I haven’t read most of the posts in this thread. But has anybody considered the possibility that these college administrators are motivated to this stance by the prospect of limiting their institution’s legal liability? </p>
<p>Just a thought.</p>
<p>“Mini, you mentioned social norms marketing. I’m familiar with it - kids think that other kids drink more than they really do - so let’s advertise the true story and that will bring the drinking rate down. Ummm…no…doesn’t work when the drinking rate is high…like it is in many schools… the schools that need a big change.”</p>
<p>Correct. Doesn’t work when the norms are high. Won’t work at Middlebury, Williams, Dartmouth, Duke. But they are so different from most college campuses in so many ways that they are almost irrelevant to the larger picture. </p>
<p>“we put college presidents in a bind since they really can’t teach responsible drinking to most of their students because it’s illegal to drink even one beer.”</p>
<p>BASICS and Marlatt’s work does precisely that, on dozens of campuses - helping students (and they can be anywhere from 17 to 25) strategize on ways to moderate their drinking, and it works. The college presidents’ bind is one of their own making. If they wanted, they can change behavior in their admissions offices, or among their RAs and junior advisors in dozens of different ways up to and including total bans. Dozens of college presidents have.</p>
<p>“So, we’ve run the drinkers off campus, drinking away from supervision, and we’re arresting kids who drink…responsibly or not.”</p>
<p>Running heavy and binge drinkers off campus is a WONDERFUL thing - for the moderate drinkers, who finally have a space! They no longer have to traipse through the vomit, or worry about the feces wall-spreaders. No, it doesn’t help the bingers…except, the data shows it does. If they have to make an effort to get to the location, they do it less often - or at least fewer of them do. (The small minority of alcoholics will drink wherever and whenever they get the opportunity, and sadly, for them, they will go looking for it wherever it is.) Idad has talked, ironically, of the advantage of having a small number of heavy drinking fraternities located away from campus, so the drunks can leave everyone else in peace. I’m a bit less sanguine about that idea, but it is a thought.</p>
<p>“What is causing this “extreme” drinking?”</p>
<p>My own opinion is school (but another time).</p>
<p>Is it possibly related to the fact that drinking is now underground or viewed as forbidden fruit?</p>
<p>The data from Europe and from Canada where drinking ages are lower strongly suggest it is not. IDad posted the data on the relationship between high school and college drinking - more binge and dangerous drinking happens among students for whom drinking is passe, not those who view it as forbidden.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually at my daughter’s school, they enforce a dry campus for the first two weeks. And the president of her school is on the list. Freshman are also prohibited from attending off-campus parties where alcohol is being served (the host of the party is basically screwed if they allow it and get caught) for these first two weeks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My daughter’s school has a dry orientation policy as well and it is widely honored. The time a few years ago the lacrosse team threw a wet party (without freshman), they were hit with some severe sanctions. </p>
<p>Upperclass students on campus during orientation keep their private parties in dorms without freshmen and on the down low.</p>
<p>The RA’s are also specifically forbidden from procuring alcohol for students and routinely honor that policy.</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school, partying starts on Orientation week. She is going up there early just for that. I think because she belongs to a sorority, when they have a mixer with a fraternity there are a few boys that are suppose to stay sober to pick them up and drive them home at night.</p>
<p>mini - OK, I agree that Marlatt has done some very good work. Here’s a quote from a UW article I found:</p>
<p>"Marlatt said there has been an increase in the number of nondrinkers, according to student surveys. The actual amount of alcohol consumed at an occasion is typically less than the perceived amount, he said.
Alcohol-abstinence-based conceptions of alcohol policy usually have a negative impact on student drinking habits in that they are forced underground, according to Marlatt.“At WSU there were student riots in response to the ‘1 and you’re out’ zero-tolerance policy held by police,” Marlatt said. UW Assistant Police Chief Ray Wittmier said that when student drinking does go under the radar, students pose more of a threat to themselves and others. “If the drinking age were lower, then there simply wouldn’t be as many problems as there are,” Marlatt said. </p>
<p>So, I guess he believes, like I do, that lowering the drinking age might actually help in some cases. Certainly would pave the way for some education on responsible drinking…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Northern Europe, Alaska, Siberia - Have you ever visited in wintertime? Daylight almost nonexistent?
A glass of good wine tastes really special then :)</p>