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SIUC administrators want no part of a movement among university leaders to lower the legal drinking age to 18.
The Amethyst Initiative, which had the support of 128 university and college presidents as of Monday, contends that having 21 as the legal drinking age encourages a culture of dangerous binge drinking. Administrators at SIUC argue that simply lowering the age would not help the problem.
SIU President Glenn Poshard said in a written statement the university would not join the initiative, but instead work to provide students with "information on the damaging effects of underage binge drinking."
"While ultimately the legislatures of the various states will decide this debate, our view is that the consequences of underage drinking are simply too significant to ignore," the statement said.
Poshard did not return three phone messages left Friday and Monday to comment further.
Presidents from universities across the nation - including Ohio State, Duke, Butler, Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins - have said their support is designed to encourage a wide review of laws as they affect the safety of college students.
The current law, passed in 1984, imposes a penalty of 10 percent of a state's federal highway appropriation on any state with a legal drinking age lower than 21. Part of the initiative argues that the law inhibits important debate about alcohol safety.
Duke University President Richard Brodhead was one of the first leaders to sign. He does not see a lowered drinking age as the solution, but rather as a way to initiate a conversation, according to Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle.
"We want to encourage an honest and constructive dialogue among educators, lawmakers, parents and students," Brodhead said, according to The Chronicle.
As a researcher for SIUC's Core Institute Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Studies, Edgardo Pimentel said he has seen this debate go on for years.
Pimentel said he has observed panels where the debate comes up numerous times, and the argument usually splits into two sides - those unwilling to look past the law and those in search of more radical options.
"Some of them just stop there and say, 'It's illegal. Why are we talking about this?' And then somebody else is saying, 'How can we ignore the fact that we have binge drinking and do nothing? We've got to do something, even if it is illegal,'" he said.
One university staffer said the problem is a cultural one that needs to be changed before the student even gets to college.
Chris Julian-Fralish, alcohol and other drug coordinator at the Wellness Center, said teenagers are encouraged to drink and consume other drugs as a ritual toward adulthood, which is why so many abuse alcohol at a young age.
"Unfortunately, alcohol and drug use has been manufactured into showing that as, 'OK, now I'm an adult.' It ends up being a lie because I've never seen someone really drunk who I said, 'Yeah, you're an adult,'" Fralish said.
If the behavior is discussed and understood at a younger age, Fralish said, the tendency to over-indulge would be stamped out by the time a teenager reaches college and all the freedom that comes with it.
The idea of a lower drinking age has met with many critics, including two university presidents who had previously supported the initiative.
Kendall Blanchard, president of Georgia Southwestern State, said he misunderstood the intent of the initiative, and decided to remove his university from the movement, according to The New York Times.
"It was clear to me that they didn't see this as a dialogue; they saw this as some kind of effort on our part to turn our schools into party schools," Blanchard said, according to The New York Times.
With the way the law stands now, the radical option can be a lose-lose situation for the leaders, Pimentel said.
"If you endorse responsible drinking, you're condoning certain behavior that is illegal," he said. "A college president can't take that position - not if he wants to keep his job."
Sean McGahan can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or mcgahan@siu.edu.
Jeff Engelhardt can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 268 or jengel@siu.edu.
