Hamilton Signs onto the Amethyst Initiative

Members of the Hamilton community are raising their glasses to President Joan Hinde Stewart, who is one of more than 120 college presidents to sign the Amethyst Initiative this summer, a pledge to re-assess the effectiveness of the minimum drinking age.

The Amethyst Initiative, named after the eponymous jewel that protects against drunkenness, is part of a movement spearheaded by John McCardell, President Emeritus of Middlebury College and founder of Choose Responsibility, a non-profit committed to initiating an open dialogue about the 21-year-old drinking age.  The pact has been steadily gaining new signatories since it was formally introduced at a June meeting of the Annapolis Group, a coalition of America’s premier liberal arts colleges.

The signatories of the Amethyst Initiative do not advocate a specific drinking age. They do, however, challenge legislators to examine whether the National Minimum Drinking Age Act’s 10% reduction in federal highway funds to states that do not enforce the 21 drinking age is worth the fallout of the 1984 law: an underground culture of underage “binge-drinking” marked by fake I.D. use.

“Binge drinking is a serious problem on most college campuses,” President Stewart explained to The Spectator.  “Research tells us that 44% of college students have engaged in binge drinking in the past two weeks.  So it is not surprising that every college president I know worries about the potentially terrible consequences of binge drinking. While we examine and debate this issue, I have every expectation that Hamilton students will exhibit the clear and cogent thinking and engage in the thoughtful discussion for which they are known.”

John Molfetas ’09 applauds President Stewart for signing the pledge and looks forward to future dialogue on campus.

“Alcohol is sort of a taboo topic, and still, it is around us everywhere at Hamilton,” Molfetas said.  “I think that there needs to be a student debate surrounding the issue of the drinking age.  We all need to become engaged with this issue.”

Class Representative Jeff Escalante ’11 was upfront with The Spectator about alcohol abuse on campus, though admits that there are pros and cons to lowering the minimum drinking age.

“It is true that the culture around drinking is that you drink to get trashed, not just have a couple for fun,” Escalante said.  “I feel that [lowering the drinking age] is something that’s worth a shot, but should be closely monitored to see if it’s working or not, and if not, be changed back quickly. Honestly, I personally think that it would just increase drinking a lot, but I could be wrong.”

Hamilton Charter Trustee and former TIME correspondent Barrett Seaman ’67 explored the drinking culture on college campuses in his 2005 book Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess, which won the Research Society on Alcoholism’s 2008 Journalism Award for its contribution to the field of alcohol research.  Seaman, who is a director of Choose Responsibility, commends President Stewart for signing the Amethyst Initiative and endorses 18 as the legal drinking age.

“There’s nothing magic about 18, except that that is the age we use to define adulthood in so many other areas,” Seaman told The Spectator.  “If the voting age was 21, as it once was, if one could not enlist in the military until 21, if one could not marry or sue or be sued or sign a contract or have one’s privacy protected until 21, then I could see a 21-year-old minimum drinking age as consistent. But that’s not the way we do things.”

Seaman admits, however, that the Amethyst Initiative faces a “formidable foe” in Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which “has a $50 million-plus budget to throw at us.”  Not to mention the group has the support of the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and the Governors Highway Safety Association.  Moreover, 52% of Americans back the 21 drinking age, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released this week.

Even though 57% believe that college presidents are not cracking down hard enough on underage drinkers, MADD, which credits the 1984 law for deterring drunk driving, lashed out at signatories on the day Choose Responsibility unveiled the Amethyst Initiative.

“Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge drinking policies,” MADD National President Laura Dean-Mooney said in an August 19^th press release. “By signing onto this initiative, these presidents have made the 21 law nearly unenforceable on their campuses. In fact, I call into question whether or not these campuses are bothering to enforce the 21 drinking age.”

Seaman dismissed critics’ arguments as “flawed” and an obstacle to “reasonable people [who] are open to trying things differently, recognizing that what we’ve been doing isn’t working.”  But MADD immediately leapt into action, urging Americans to write letters to their governors and the college presidents who signed the petition to persuade them to take their names off the list.

Soon after, two of the initiative’s original signatories––Robert M. Franklin of Atlanta’s Morehouse College and Kendall Blanchard of Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, GA––backed out of the Amethyst Initiative because of the ensuing backlash from its opponents.  “It was clear to me that [the critics] didn’t see this as a dialogue,” President Blanchard told The New York Times in an August 21 article.  “They saw this as some kind of effort on our part to turn our schools into party schools.”

But Hamilton Dean of Students Nancy Thompson does not think age is the issue here.  “I actually am far more interested in student behavior than age,” said Thompson.  “I believe we need to address any student behavior that is disruptive, destructive, or dangerous and strive to encourage and reward responsible choices.”

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