College avoids lower drinking age movement

Pres. Priscilla Bell and the Board of Trustees are working rigorously to attain the necessary land next to NIC and set up the infamous and heavily-debated Education Corridor. With such a heated topic already on their agenda, Bell and the Board are not prepared to sign the Amethyst Initiative as many other schools have done.

“It’s an interesting idea,” Bell said. “I know there are a lot of big-time university presidents that have signed this.”

More than 130 other presidents have signed on, debating the minimum drinking age is not working.

“(The drinking age)is not a simple question,” said Richard H. Brodhead of Duke University. “But the current answer is also not an effective solution to the problem.”

Meanwhile, Bell is not as sure the initiative is a guaranteed end-all to binge drinking and drunk driving.

“Whether lowering the drinking age would change that is highly problematic in my view,” she said. “You go to Europe, where people start drinking early in life. It’s just a very different kind of culture, where alcohol and wine are more respected. They’re not misused in the way we tend to do. That seems to be part of the fabric of our culture, perhaps more than it is a product of the drinking age.”

Even if the drinking age were to be lowered, however, the residence hall would stay completely dry.

“I certainly wouldn’t want drinking in our dorms in any event,” she said. “Almost everything that happens in a college dorm that’s bad has alcohol or drugs connected. Even if the drinking age were 18 or 19, it would not be in the dorms; not on college trips, either; it’s just not going to happen.”

Yet, on the Amethyst Initiative, itself: “I don’t have a position on this, and I wouldn’t take one without the board being behind it in any event. I don’t think it’s going to be a high priority.”