Two university administrators joined a nation-wide effort to examine the legal drinking age and how it contributes to binge drinking on college campuses in an effort to curb unsafe alcohol consumption.
University President Dan Mote and University System of Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan signed the petition, which went public earlier this week, along with 113 other presidents and chancellors including the presidents of Towson University and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.
Despite initial media reports that the petition was in favor of lowering the legal drinking age to 18, both Mote and Kirwan insist the point of the petition is to engage administrators, students and others in an honest discussion about drinking on college campuses.
The initiative “struck kind of a nerve, a problem we have that’s difficult to deal with,” Mote said. “So this initiative was calling for a dialogue on this topic to try to come up with something better than what we’ve got, which included the drinking age but left it quite open to everything else. It proposed no policy change; it proposed dialogue.”
Mote said he decided to join the movement after receiving a letter about it a few weeks ago. He didn’t consult other university administrators or Kirwan before signing, but he said he hopes to get as many people involved in the discussions as possible. He said he wasn’t sure where the discussions would go but was keeping an open mind.
“I have no specific plans to take this beyond the campus, since I’m not a principal on this initiative and I don’t even see in the initiative how it’s going to happen,” Mote said. “On the other hand, movements can get momentum, and one shouldn’t rule that out as a possibility.”
Kirwan said the university has launched a number of programs to scale back on-campus drinking and educate students on the dangers of excessive consumption. But the university can’t always protect students from off-campus influences or when they’re away from the campus, he said.
He said he hopes framing the alcohol discussions in a national context will help young people be safer year-round.
“I think what we’re doing with relation to alcohol abuse is not working,” Kirwan said. “Young people have lots of access to alcohol … and binge drinking seems to be on the rise.”
Kirwan said he plans to set up many forums throughout the system’s colleges and universities and he said he wants to see increased research into other countries’ drinking laws and their effectiveness.
“I’m not willing to accept that today’s drinking policies are optimal. And I’m struck by the ambiguities that we find ourselves in,” Mote said. “On the one hand, we have quite strict enforcement of alcohol laws on the campus … at the same time, we give alcohol education to people who are underage on how to use alcohol … so it’s a little ambiguous: recognizing that people are going to break the law and trying to protect them, their health and safety; at the same time you’re enforcing the law, trying to prevent them from breaking the law.”
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