Opinion

’21′ is only a number

Underage drinking more common than one may think

By Pattie Barry

Posted on Oct. 04, 2004, at 12:00 a.m.

As fate would have it, over my past two and a half semesters here are UMaine, not all of my friends have learned to consolidate themselves on one side of this campus. Though I pleaded with them to join me on the beloved south side, I still make the long and fearful trek across the mall to reach the other world that is Gannett Hall. Many a night I have spent wandering its clamorous hallways and questioned how a box like this could be on the same campus as placid Aroostook.

As an innocent freshman, I failed to see how the 300 lb. football players at the G spot had anything in common with my hackey sack-wielding comrades in Kennebec. However, as my freshman orientation days began to linger behind me, I came to realize the uniting factor of this campus that extends not only from Andro to the York but to DTAV and Oxford as well. Whether it be the 30-rack challenge on Friday night or discretely sipping Guinness out of that ROC-mug to fool the RA, underage drinking happens and it happens everywhere.

Everyone knows it happens too, and most of the people in charge don’t care as long as you don’t be dumb about it – ahem, discharge a fire extinguisher. As my RAs told me upon at my first all-hall meeting freshman year, “If you’re going to do it, don’t let me know about it.” Administrators, for the most part, have accepted that drinking is a part of college life and don’t make a considerable effort to curb its occurrences. And, just as it happens at UMaine, it happens at all colleges in this country.

So, what is the glamour of the number 21? I wish someone would tell me, because almost every person I’ve ever talked to has no reservations, other then the ones imposed by the law, to drinking before that magic age. And while we all look forward to our 21st birthday, most of the time it isn’t the first party we’ll dip into the hard stuff.

As fate would have it, I was born 18 years too late to take part in the 18-year-old drinking age in the state of Maine. Fortunately, I live in a state that borders our ever-tolerant neighbor to the north – Canada – with such a drinking age; a situation of which I have taken advantage. Interestingly, events that opponents of underage drinking might predict are evidently, well, not evident there. Drunk driving isn’t a huge problem in Canada, and neither is domestic violence.

In Western Europe, where the drinking age is much younger, though they might have a greater per capita consumption of alcohol, there are fewer instances of alcohol abuse and alcoholism. The reason for this is that children and teenagers are taught to drink responsibly in a family environment instead of something that they have to hide from their parents. Consequently, in America, when kids finally are able to drink, its like a forbidden fruit that they are finally able to take part of.

The painful irony is that the generation for whom alcohol was available at a young age is the one that is making the decisions against a lower drinking age now. During their days at UMaine, they were able to visit the Somerset Saloon for a drink or two and booze flowed freely at Bumstock. Today we can’t even buy a pack of cigarettes on campus, and most of the drinking doesn’t happen at the Bear’s Den.

In order to lower the drinking age, programs combating alcohol abuse and drunk driving would have to intensify, and it would be necessary to educate our teenagers more about appropriate alcohol consumption practices. With the money we would save from not enforcing the higher drinking age, this shouldn’t be a problem.

The debate that exists is an old one, and probably will linger for a long time. Still, I invite you to ask yourselves: Is it really better now than it had been then?

Pattie Barry is a sophomore French major.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2004, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.