MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- John M. McCardell Jr., former president of Middlebury College , listens as the recent graduates who serve as residential advisers recount the excesses they've witnessed. They've accompanied students suffering alcohol poisoning to the hospital. They've stumbled on buckets of vomit and dealt with sexual assaults that involved alcohol.
After more than three decades at Middlebury, as history professor and provost and president, none of this is news to McCardell. What he wants to do about it might surprise some, however.
He wants to lower the drinking age to 18.
Here he is, in a lounge of the new athletic center, to talk about the nonprofit called Choose Responsibility that he recently established to push for just such a change.
McCardell has been on campus long enough to remember sharing wine with undergraduates at faculty-student gatherings when the drinking age was 18. He envisions adults modeling responsible drinking. He remembers the intoxicated 22-year-old student who died during his presidency in a drunk-driving crash, and talks of focusing on abuses of alcohol rather than consumption.
He proposes allowing states to pilot alcohol education programs for 18-to-20 year-olds who are out of high school and then issue so-called "drinking licenses" to young people who successfully complete the course. He faces a tough sell. Among his opponents are Mothers Against Drunk Driving and former Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano.
"If binge drinking has never been worse, why do we think legal age 21 has been successful?" McCardell says. "Drinking is taking place in out-of-sight places and in settings that increase the risk of harm to the individuals who are consuming alcohol and anyone who finds themselves in their path. I think we can do better."
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Why not drink at 18?
Originally Posted by PUGalicious
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