Trust the kids and trust the facts: lower the drinking age

Right now I am loving and supporting the Amethyst Initiative, which is enlisting the support of university presidents in a call to reexamine the legal drinking age in the U.S. (U.S. News & World Report) Especially after confirming more or less to my satisfaction that no beverage industry money is involved. It's a project of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit founded by the former president of Middlebury College (you know those Middlebury kids...woo HOOOO! no wonder he's concerned).

I buy Choose Responsibility's arguments in favor of lowering the drinking age. For various reasons, some related to personal responsibility and some related to legal exposure, I spent an inordinate amount of time in college trying to keep people from killing themselves with alcohol. And I'm telling you,

1) A legal drinking environment is almost always safer than an illegal drinking environment, regardless of the age of the drinkers.

2) Our unusually high drinking age is unquestionably a factor in many college students' unhealthy relationship with alcohol, which includes binge drinking.

3) I'm much less worried about a college kid drinking a couple of beers and getting behind the wheel--not that it isn't cause for worry--than I am about a college kid drinking 20 shots of hard liquor and then falling asleep on his back and drowning in his own vomit. There is a good case to be made, as Choose Responsibility does, that the age 21 limit contributes to college-aged binge drinking in a big way, and that it's binge drinking that is the greatest threat to the health and well-being of teenagers and those around them.

Anyway, food--or drink--for thought.

Power to the procrastinators

Over the last few years some of America's more expensive colleges and universities have worked to make tuition more affordable.* While I'd guess that many factors beyond the price tag can make the road to college rocky for less-advantaged kids, maybe this type of assistance will help.**

But what about the recent move to eliminate early admission programs, in the name of equality? The basic idea is, it takes a certain set of socioeconomic advantages to access and succeed in the early admissions process. By elimintating early admissions, we level the playing field.

At least that's the conventional wisdom. But as Stanford's provost points out in this column, that conventional wisdom runs counter to the facts and statistics on early admissions. He makes a pretty convincing case that early admittees are not displacing less-advantaged applicants, and that, therefore, eliminating early admissions won't necessarily have the hoped-for field-leveling effect.

In all probability, the students to benefit most from the elimination of early admissions will be, you guessed it, the lazy-ass ones who can't be bothered to spend the summer touring colleges and obsessing over application essays. And I have to say, there is a certain justice in that.

*For example, Princeton converted its need-based student loans to grants in 2001 and Yale did so in 2005.

**Though, of course there's the disturbing trend that college tuition on average is rising much faster than incomes.

Please, just stay far, far away from U Street

"we decided to dedicate this edition of On the Go to the newbie university crowd: It's the College Freshman's Guide to Washington ." (WP)

*cringe*

Hey, the kids are alright. But you know what I mean.