Society's Drinking Game

Jack Howard

It’s a Saturday night on any college campus. Everyone is ready to blow off some steam from the past week and relax. What will college kids do? The 21 and older students will all drink with other 21 and older students. And the underage kids will hang out by themselves without any alcohol. That’s what you might here a naïve person say But in reality, there will be a large number of underage students drinking. Even though the drinking age is 21, most students still drink. And because the law is for 21 year-olds, underage drinking is done behind closed doors away from the public view. This behavior is highly dangerous and is the basis of (what I call) Society’s Drinking Game.

Many people believe that the drinking age being 21 on a college campus is a very bad idea. Most college students under the age of 21 drink anyway. When the legal drinking age is 21, it forces these younger people to drink behind closed doors and away from the public view. It pushes these students to binge drink the few times they can, which in turn creates dangerous drinking habits and can lead to problems later in life. I’ve personally been witness to many instances of scary binge drinking habits, and how they can erode a student and cause them to fail many classes.

I think the drinking age should be lowered to 18 on college campuses. It would allow all social events to be wet social events. Police and campus administrators could focus their time and efforts on making sure students are drinking in a safe manner, instead of trying to prevent students from drinking underage. Students would be more inclined to seek help if someone was drinking too much because there would be less worry about legal ramifications. I think lowering the drinking age would be a logical choice to combat a constant problem in American colleges today.