URI president opposes lowering drinking age

09/11/08 - Although some universities are embracing the idea of a lower national drinking age, University of Rhode Island President Robert L. Carothers said URI will not be among them.This summer, more than 100 university presidents signed an initiative in favor of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 years of age. The Amethyst Initiative, a campaign launched by a faculty member at Vermont's Middlebury College, garners support from them to promote alcohol use in moderation as opposed to the "clandestine" binge drinking usually responsible for campus tragedies.

As of now, the initiative has acquired the support of 130 college presidents, including Dartmouth, Duke and nearby Johnson and Wales University.

Carothers, who transformed URI into a dry campus in the mid-1990s, said lowering the drinking age would not curb the irresponsible actions of 18 to 21 year olds.

He defends his decision with an armory of research-based facts, including statistics that show a decrease in drunk driving fatalities after the legal age was upped decades ago, and the knowledge that more than 90 percent of sexual assaults are alcohol-related.

In addition, research points out that the younger people start drinking, the more likely an alcohol addiction will develop. Studies at URI's Cancer Research Center can predict the alcohol abuse rate on any given day.

But the real knowledge, he said, lies in his experience.

"When you've been in this business as long as I have, and listened to as many men and women crying about what happened to them when they were drunk, it's not a small problem," he said. "When you talk to as many parents and tell them their kids are dead, you don't forget that, and that happens every year."

However, according to their testaments on Amethyst's Web site, many of the Presidents who signed have similar sentiments to those of Carothers.

"Every day, we see the tragic costs of that culture first hand," wrote President Elisabeth Muhlenfeld of Sweet Briar College in Virginia. "It is the lucky college president who has not had to telephone parents to report that their child has been the victim of date rape exacerbated by alcohol abuse, or killed in an automobile accident coming back from an alcohol fueled all-night party."

Where their opinions differ is in the effectiveness of lowering the drinking age. Carothers said his peers support the Amethyst Initiative because they want less responsibility.

"They want the problem to go away," he said of those who signed. "They don't want to enforce the law."

According to the Web site, the word amethyst is Greek for "not intoxicated." Derived from a myth, the amethyst was a symbol of moderation in ancient Greece. But Carothers is not convinced this will change anything.

Carothers believes that when presidents talk about lowering the drinking age, they are imagining "a nuclear family sitting around the dinner table enjoying a glass of red wine." In reality, Carothers said, that's not the case, and that the phenomenon among students is drinking to get drunk.

John McCardell, a history professor at Middlebury and a former president of the school, launched the initiative in June, argues that prohibiting students to drink promotes alcohol abuse.

He told the Wall Street Journal last month, "The law is so obviously unjust and discriminatory. It ought to at least be a subject of debate."

President David C. Joyce of Wisconsin's Ripon College concurs.

Joyce, who also provided a written statement to Amethyst's Web site, wrote, "It is ludicrous that we can send young men and women to war, but they can't legally drink a beer."

Carothers counters this with a fact - the part of the brain that controls judgment is not fully developed until about 21. Because the brain has not fully matured, he said, it's not uncommon to hear people talk about college students feeling immortal.

"We call that bravery, but it's actually judgment," he said.

Carothers added that this is why college-aged men and women engage in activities like binge drinking. He added that by the time students have graduated and taken jobs, drinking is usually curbed to a couple of social drinks a week.

"The phenomenon of binge drinking is almost exclusively in that 18 to 21-year-old group, maybe to 23," he said.

In 1999, for the first time in university history, Carothers banned alcohol from Homecoming events.

"Did that damage people's sense of fun? Yes," he said.

However, since then no students have been taken to the hospital during Homecoming events for alcohol poisoning. In previous years it was common for these emergencies to hit double digits, and one year the count was around 30, he said.

Avoiding these emergencies and protecting life is what Carothers said he is concerned about.

"Every group of new students coming in here doesn't understand that." Carothers said.

And he doesn't expect them to. Carothers, who spent three years working with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's committee on campus drinking, is not changing his mind anytime soon.

At last week's student senate meeting, it was announced the initiative would be discussed, however nothing has been mentioned since.