Keeping It Up

Ralph Davis, coordinator for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs (ATOD) program at Cal State Long Beach spoke with me in a room usually reserved for student drug and alcohol counseling sessions when I asked him this hypothetical question: What would happen at Cal State Long Beach if the national drinking age was lowered to 18?

"Well if our campus policy didn't change, I'd have tons of citations coming in because everyone under 21 would be drinking," Davis said, referring to the zero-tolerance policy in the dorms and on-campus restrictions. In fact, Davis tells me, if you received a write up for a first-time violation of CSULB liquor laws in the spring of 2008, there's an 82 percent chance you were under 21. And that's not far off for the semester average.

"If it's ever any lower, I'd be shocked," Davis said. A lowered drinking age might seem like a dangerous idea to University President F. King Alexander, who in August this year said he would not be adding his signature to a petition of university and college presidents and chancellors who support lowering the national drinking age from 21 to 18, known as the Amethyst Initiative. The signatory count stands at 130, and includes signatures from President Lawrence S. Bacow of Tufts University and President Sharon D. Herzberger of Whittier University.

Alexander told student press at CSULB that he disagrees with its authors, who claim the binge drinking culture found on college campuses is the result of setting the age limit too high at 21. They say lowering the age to 18 would remove the taboo appeal of alcohol and could be the solution to dangerous alcohol-related activities, such as drunk driving and binge drinking.

"There is not one shred of evidence that lowering the [drinking] age would remedy binge drinking," Alexander said to Daily Forty-Niner reporters. "I think it would compound the problem to do things without further evidence."

Educated About Alcohol

The 2004 death of President's Scholar Jason Kirsinas after a night of drinking on his 21st birthday is CSULB's most recent and well-known victim of alcohol abuse, and before that was California State University, Chico freshman Adrian Heideman, who died of alcohol poisoning at a fraternity pledge party in 2000. Heideman's death triggered an initiative for the CSU Chancellor to make alcohol education programs mandatory across the system - proper alcohol education being the key factor to safer drinking habits, regardless of the legal drinking age.

The alcohol rehabilitation program at CSULB, called Step 1-2-3, took in 176 first-time (Step 1) offenders and 63 second-time (Step 2) offenders in spring 2008. Step 1 involves an extended educational presentation on controlled substances, and Step 2 is a call back for a one-on-one counseling session with ATOD advisers. The program has not seen any Step 3 offenders on recent record, who would be redirected from educational and counseling courses to University Judicial Affairs.

Numbers show that students under 21 make up the majority of offenders in Step 1-2-3, and administrators involved in liquor law enforcement and alcohol education think that lowering the drinking age might spur a rise.

"Both I and the university are opposed to [the Amethyst Initiative]," Doug Robinson, Vice President of Student Services at CSULB and Chair of the ATOD Advisory Council, said in an interview with LB Report. "And you will notice that most of the chancellors and presidents signing on to the initiative are from private colleges with more freedom to adopt independent positions."

Having a position on the national drinking age can skirt the real issue of alcohol education, says Linda Pena. Pena is an ATOD adviser who specializes in addiction counseling, and coordinates students in Step 1-2-3 educational programs and counseling sessions, and directs student-only Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on campus. Pena believes a student educated in alcohol safety can be the "first line of defense" against dangerous drinking habits, and helps what people might call "problem" drinkers make better choices.

"I don't treat them as if they're abnormal, because society condones it," Pena said about underage drinking. "For most people who are intensified [drinkers] at university, it's not because they have a disease . it's just the environment that they're in."

Disconnected Campus

Alexander may be right that a lowered drinking age would be problematic for a commuter campus like CSULB. In a September 2 article in the Daily Forty-Niner, Alexander recalled his college years in Oxford, England, and how teens in Europe didn't necessarily rely on cars to travel. Compare that to CSULB's jam-packed parking lots on a Monday morning.

"Teenagers don't even drive cars [in Europe], whereas in America, everyone drives cars."

Legislators and organizations against lowering the drinking age have often pointed to national driving statistics to make their point. They have shown a decrease in automobile fatalities and injuries among the 16 to 20 age group that involve alcohol when the age is set higher - when the drinking age was set at 21 in 1984, the numbers decreased by 32 percent according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Few 18 to 20-year-old CSULB students would likely be drinking on or near campus. On-campus housing only accounts for a small percent of the student population, with the remainder roaming a geography that spans from South Orange County to the greater L.A. area.

"Think of a school like UC Santa Barbara," Davis said. "Everyone goes to Isla Vista, and they have a lot of problems there, but you also have an area that you can really focus on to help prevent the problem. Whereas with here, where would I start?"

Davis has served as CSULB's ATOD Director since 2003, and says that that from what he's seen, those under 21 to drink often feel pressured to drink before they go out - something that not only leads to rapid consumption of alcohol but leaving campus presumably by car. For this reason the ATOD program often looks at off-campus areas where drinking might be a problem; Davis keeps in contact with Belmont Shore and Downtown Long Beach businesses to keep an ear out for problems with CSULB students, speaks at pledge presentations for Fraternity and Sorority houses, and may contact apartment complexes with large student populations to include alcohol provisions in their lease agreements.