I Would Like a Keg for My 18th Birthday

Finally, a debate worth having.  Puritans beware, university presidents are mobolizing to ask the only sensible question that can be asked in the face of obscene binge drinking on campuses: shouldn’t we lower the drinking age?

Unequivocally, this writer thinks yes, and it’s long overdue.  I’ve never understood the logic behind the age of 21.   MADD can quote all the statistics they want, but numbers do not remotely tell the story.  Nor do they indicate the real problem.

The issue is education.  Most incoming college students have had to complete some form of an alcohol survey and education course, usually online, mandated by their schools.  This is half the battle.  However, telling kids what drinking is going to do to them and their reaction time is not going to educate them on the proper way to handle alcohol, how to consume in moderation, and plan ahead of time for responsible drinking.  Any educator knows that words and theory are at best half the battle, without experience, those words are worthless.

Contrary to what MADD, furious Puritans, and most likely, lawmakers, believe, this does not need to be a revolution.  I’d be happy with a compromise that at least allows people at the age of 18 to drink with the supervision of adults.  The idea here isn’t to let kids get drunk earlier, the idea is to bring a tabboo topic into the mainstream, to educate kids before they arrive at college and learn their limits the hard way.

On a cultural note, there is also incentive to open certain 21+ venues to younger people.  I think specifically of the many jazz and blues clubs in Chicago.  How are young musicians and fans supposed to identify with their music, a form that is uniquely American, I might add, when they can’t even hear it live?  Concerts are unfairly, not by their choice, exclusive and it should be no surprise that these music forms are shrinking when they can’t capitalize on younger fans.

It’s tough to imagine the statistics MADD fears really escalating if the drinking age is legally lowered.  The reality is that those who want alcohol already get it.  Stricter laws just earn more money for the middleman upperclassmen who can supply the freshmen on campus.

There are many creative ways one can work to enforce it as well.  As I mentioned, a stipulation involving adults in controlled environments could be one.  Also, a limit on the amount purchased at a time can also provide a buffer.  Would it be ridiculous to suggest a learner’s permit for young drinkers?  Perhaps a card that can be swiped that wouldn’t allow them to make more than one purchase a week, per se?

Are there ways to get around these?  Of course.  But students are getting around the rules now, with the drastic results deriving from the education they’re not getting.

Slackers

Ever since Bluto Blutarski, college has been the privileged white American’s extended Rumspringa. Or at least where you went to avoid that Viet Nam draft thing. Now, with the democratization of education and the advent of the business school, by which device can be obtained an undergraduate degree without having to participate in protracted thought and analysis, the debauchery of the university is now available to all races, sexes, and creeds.

A report from sociologists at the Bowling Green University in Ohio now sticks some statistics onto the pimply, Natty-Ice-chugging face of that debauchery, seen every Friday through Sunday night at the frat house basement party or local college dive bar. And what have we learned? That full-time college students, relieved of the necessity of gainful employ so that they can study, use their time to socialize, use/abuse alcohol, and destroy property.

But even the kids getting good grades and degrees in actual subjects (no, food marketing does not count) are opting for low profiles in the towns they just graduated from. Said one ambitious UC Davis graduate,

I guess if I knew there was gold in the hills outside of Davis, I might be more willing to hop out and enter the work force. But I figure our economy is crumbling; I might as well just stay cool and not worry about it.

American ingenuity at its finest: no jobs? declining economy? No problem! Just chill out! This is the can-do attitude that built the railroads and defeated Nazism.

Has academia failed today’s students? Is my generation just generally prone to failure? Perhaps it is not necessarily us, for in almost any age mostly everything is mediocre or worse. The vast majority of poetry and scholarship is terrible, not to mention the moral bankruptcy of commercial, military, and political activity across time and space. So, too, the majority of students.

Still I shudder to think that the same California slacker who is thinking of becoming a teacher, writer, or politician may actually be elected to office one day. Or should I be more afraid that his lack of interest in the public sphere will allow less savory characters to gain power?