Alcohol policy and personal responsibility

The consumption of alcoholic beverages by people under the age of 21 is illegal. When someone under the age of 21 decides to take a sip of any alcoholic beverage he or she is deciding to break the law. Please keep that in mind as you read this essay.

As you read the recent responses to the university's new alcohol policy in the Daily, whether they are editorials or op-eds, you will notice again and again that the authors seem to feel that simply because underage drinking occurs, the act should not be punishable. It is hardly necessary to point out that this logic is fundamentally flawed.

Many individuals have made the case that the drinking age is inappropriate and ought to be lowered to 18, as it is in many other countries. Such arguments are intriguing and not without merit. However, until they are changed from mere whine-and-moan arguments into nationally recognized law, they remain only an it-wasn't-fair badge for underage drinkers to pin on themselves when they have suffered the consequences of breaking the law.

Going through a point-by-point discussion of the flaws in the Daily responses to the change in alcohol policy would not be a worthwhile endeavor for this essay. As college students and responsible readers, you can work the flaws out for yourselves. However, there are a few points made in the Sept. 16 Daily editorial that deserve closer scrutiny because of their apparent ignorance of the point made at the beginning of this essay: Drinking by persons under the age of 21 is an act punishable by law.

For example, the editorial makes the claim that "instituting a stricter alcohol focusing more on punishment than prevention and placing discipline over discussion policy is only going halfway" (sic). Consider the case in which a young man, under age 21, is apprehended for alcohol consumption at a house party far from the ivory tower of Tufts University. The police officer who apprehends this young man will not offer to drive him to a forum to engage in a lively discussion of a fair alcohol policy or how to deal with the problem of underage drinking. He will certainly not give the young man a warning, and if he does, he is not doing his job. The officer will instead, depending on the state and the nature of the offense, give him a ticket with a court date.

This story does not sit well with college students, particularly those under age 21. They would want to write it differently. It is, however, irrelevant as to whether or not this is the best way things should be done; it is the law. All the whining and moaning in the world would not save the young man in this story, no matter how morally sound and logically convincing his argument. The author's claim that such a situation is a "repressive system" is a moot point. This "repressive system" is the law of the United States, which the author seems otherwise perfectly happy to live under.

Regardless, under the current system, the university has decided to cut the underage drinkers a break: Rather than reporting you to the authorities, they put you on probation. You don't have to pay a cent, and Uncle Sam doesn't get your name under the long list of people with similar infractions. One should be so lucky as to get a university-sponsored censure that dies when you graduate over a government citation that stays for life, when he or she has earned both.

Which begs the answer to the question that the authors of the editorial seem to be avoiding: Whose fault is it when one has been drinking underage? Is it the government's fault? The university's?

Despite what those who would critique the university's alcohol policy might believe, the response is none of the above. The answer: the one who made the decision to drink underage. Students know the risks when they decide to drink when under the age of 21, and thus must bear the consequences.

Students so eager for independence and adulthood would do well to read that last sentence again, no matter how much it might sting. The same is the case for drinking to excess, although the consequences can be far graver. The logic that the university would somehow be responsible for an alcohol-related death because a student was too afraid of the equivalent of a university-sponsored slap on the wrist to call an ambulance, as alluded to at the end of the Sept. 16 editorial, is tragically flawed. That student decided to drink himself to that point; no one is responsible for his fate but himself.

Rather than whining sullenly about how it's not fair, let's take some responsibility for our actions. Let's stand up to the challenge, and show the university that they don't need to babysit us.

We're big kids now.

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Stanley Abraham is a senior majoring in history and Spanish.