Colleges take on drinking age
A call to examine the age-21 threshold has sparked heated debate on campuses.
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo

Would lowering the drinking age make alcohol problems more or less prevalent on campus? In a bold challenge to the decades-old status quo, 129 college presidents have signed a statement calling on elected officials "to support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age."

Known as the Amethyst Initiative, it has stirred discussions on campuses and editorial pages across the United States. It's also drawn stinging criticism from groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which defends the age limit as a key factor in reducing traffic fatalities.

"We agree there are terrible problems with binge and underage drinking. We just don't agree on their proposed solution, that being lowering the drinking age," says MADD president Laura Dean-Mooney in a phone interview. In the group's press release in mid-August, she urged parents to "think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge-drinking policies."

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