If the parents do not like the kid’s partying, they can refuse to contribute to the college costs. Or (when the student is still in high school) veto specific colleges where the partying and alcohol scene looks excessive for them.
Because every 18 year old has parents who fully financially support them. Right.
When I was 20, living on my own, and working 65 hours a week I found it insulting that I couldn’t go to a bar for a few drinks with the rest of my coworkers. Clearly I was too immature to handle alcohol, despite the fact that the law considered me perfectly able to work more than full time, rent an apartment without a parental cosigner, and operate dangerous machinery for a living.
Anyways, I fully agree with this new policy since it basically eliminates the possibility of an alcohol OD while still recognizing that college students will drink. I know that if my school had this policy, most of the frats would go along with it since it still allowed them to have alcohol, just not the strongest stuff.
They sure can spend our money like adults… ~X(
The detailed report. Pages 4 to 8 has the details on Dartmouth’s drinking problem (with pretty charts and graphs!).
http://forward.dartmouth.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/FINAL-REPORT-Web.pdf
Does anyone else see the error in the first graph/chart (under High Risk drinking) ? 
Banning hard liquor on campus–and in off-campus fraternities and sororities–is part of Hanlon’s plan but not all of it, by any means. The plan to create residential colleges is a very big change in students lives at D, where students ended up having to move to different dorms much more frequently than at may other schools. Which is part of why the Greek houses provided continuity and a friendship base for many. I think it is a tremendous improvement.
http://www.vnews.com/home/15449664-95/dartmouths-road-to-reform
Adults of any age, 18, 38, 58, 78, whatever, can all do a lot of very stupid things. If adult is defined by behavior, there should be a mechanism to have people declared infants if they do enough dumb stuff.
Nice try, Dartmouth. Not going to work though.
When I was growing up we could by 3.2 at age 18. (I’m dating myself!)
I was in HS when the legal drinking age was 18. By the time I was 18 the age was 19, I was briefly legal at 19 point until it went to 21.
It didn’t matter anyway, I never had trouble buying alcohol in a bar or store or anywhere and neither did any of my friends.
It really bothers me when parents try to justify underage drinking because they did it themselves.
Me too.
It not justifying it, it is explaining that it wasn’t really different when the age was 18 or 19 or 21. I would like it if the age was moved back because I think it is easier to control legal drinking than illegal. I do think there is less binge drinking when it is legal at a younger age because those who are 18 or 19 don’t have to drink 5 shots before going out to the game or event where they can’t buy a drink legally. In my experience, we drank more responsibly in college when the drinking age was 18 (for beer) because we didn’t have to binge. We drank more responsibly in bars/restaurants (3.2 beer license required food to be available, so most places had burgers or pizza) than at frat parties or private parties. We drank less.
The biggest problem I found was ‘all you can drink nights’ or ‘ladies’ night’ were there was a lot of cheap alcohol. UVA is now prohibiting kegs or party balls. Cans or bottles are more expensive, and someone is less likely to open one last can than to have one less solo cup of beer at the end of the party.
But back to the topic of this thread, I think Dartmouth is right to do something, and banning hard liquor is a start.
From an equality under the law standpoint, I do feel if we as a society feel an 18 year old is adult enough to elect future leaders and representatives in government and to join up/possibly be drafted to fight in wars if the draft is brought back, then they should be considered adult enough to drink. The 21+ to drink but 18 to be adult in many other matters just creates a group of second-class citizens which I don’t agree with on constitutional philosophical grounds.
The corollary to that is that we as a society need to ensure that people are mature enough to fullfill that expectation by the time they are 18 or before.
I think it’s a great idea if the alums support it, and I wish more colleges would go to a residential college model.
Does anyone have a feeling about how Dartmouth alums are reacting?
Colleges consistently find that when you ban kegs the kids turn to more easily concealable liquor, which is a problematic unintended consequence.
Our nation’s alcohol laws with respect to 18-21 year olds are simply broken, and I don’t envy the College administrators who repeatedly have to deal with parenting these kids over issues that should have been dealt with at home. I worry that the collective reaction to alcohol incidents on campus will be to increase the criminalization of alcohol for this age group, instead of an effort acknowledging that prohibition doesn’t work for 18-21 year olds just like it didn’t work for the rest of society. We need to think about ways to partially lift prohibition for young adults, particularly so that we as parents can guide them in the appropriate consumption of alcohol, instead of leaving this real-world education to our kids on campus without real oversight.
Like what Dartmouth is trying to do. Come down hard on the most dangerous stuff and see if the behavior can be channeled to less risky stuff.
If we were going to change the actual drinking age laws, I’d say you are legal for beer/wine only on the September 1 or December 31 of the calendar year in which you turn 18. That would pretty much eliminate any kid who was still in high school.
Some first semester college freshmen would/would not be legal, but I wouldn’t sweat that detail for beer/wine. Just aggressively police the hard stuff.
It would probably eliminate the option for more than half, certainly wouldn’t be considered “pretty much eliminate any.” Hell, that would mean I could have drank at 17 for a little over a month. In addition, laws just aren’t written this way.
Could legislate that anything under 20% ABV (15% that Dartmouth is doing is weird, since many beers and wines are in that 15-20% range but liquor is mainly 40%+) is legal at 19, which is the legal age for alcohol in Canada.