In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, forcing states to raise their drinking ages to 21 or lose 10% of their federal highway funds. The states complied, and drinking at colleges and universities was forced underground as students enjoyed alcohol behind closed doors and in increasingly unsafe ways. Now over 100 college presidents and chancellors have signed a statement calling on lawmakers to eliminate these risks by returning the drinking age to 18. President John DeGioia should join them.
The signatories of the statement, called the Amethyst Initiative, don’t come from marginal institutions. They include the presidents of Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth, as well as schools near Georgetown like Washington & Lee and two University of Maryland schools. All of the signatories have realized what Congress has been unable to—prohibiting people under 21 from drinking doesn’t stop their drinking, it only makes their consumption of alcohol more surreptitious, irresponsible, and risky.
Take this statistic from the Amethyst Initiative’s fact sheet: “96 percent of the alcohol consumed by 15-20 year-olds is consumed when the drinker is having five or more drinks at a time.” By forbidding underage students from drinking, Congress and other supporters of the current law have changed drinking from something enjoyed responsibly among one’s family and friends, as it is in Europe and other countries, into something done in secret, and in large, often unsafe, quantities.
The higher drinking age, which was previously set at 18 in D.C., has changed the college party culture, including at Georgetown. Healy Hall used to have a bar, where students and other members of the Georgetown community could meet to socialize while enjoying drinks. Such a bar catering to students couldn’t survive today—a higher drinking age means hardly any students go to the Leavey Center’s bar, Hoyas, or the new bar at Epicurean. Instead, drinking at Georgetown is largely confined to pre-gaming in dorms followed by apartment and townhouse parties where kegs and tubs of jungle juice abound.
Georgetown demonstrated a commitment to addressing the problem of binge drinking on campus last year when it enacted the one-keg-per-party limit, the party registration rules, and harsher penalties for alcohol infractions. It’s time for Georgetown to reaffirm that commitment by signing onto the Amethyst Initiative.
