On faith: Colleges are wrong to advocate lowering the national drinking age from 21 to 18

Alfred Gunn

guest columnist

We’re Mormons. We don’t drink, so we avoid a lot of health and social problems. We teach our youth and new converts to not drink, but we hardly ever mention the subject from the pulpit.

But today I’m writing about it.

When I was a kid, Mom told me not to fall for the line “Everybody’s doing it.” But that is the line that scores of college presidents are using to call for a lowering of the national drinking age from 21 to 18, according to a recent Washington Post article (Educators Urge Lower Drinking Age to Cut Bingeing, by Susan Kinzie, Aug. 20).

“The college presidents who have signed on to this initiative know that some young adults drink. They just do,” said Dennis O’Shea, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins University. “And with the law the way it is, we have to be enforcers. We’re not in a position where we can have a good, open conversation with students about drinking responsibly, safely and in moderation.”

Mom was right. The presidents are wrong. This is no time to claim they can’t have an “open conversation” with students, while the college culture glorifies drinking.

Kids are killing each other in car crashes, frat men are falling out of windows to their death, and coeds are binge drinking themselves into the morgue.

Come on, college presidents, you are the university! You can discuss things! How about conversations about living alcohol-free lives?

When your students are rioting in the streets after sporting events, starting fires and fights, it is time to “separate” them from the university and make room for serious students. Not cop out.

I’ll admit I don’t have any love for alcohol. Alcohol impairs judgment — more so in the lives of teens and young adults, who are still developing judgment capabilities. Alcohol is involved in many bad decisions and implicated in so many sad outcomes.

I tire of hearing about a drowning or other fatality being “alcohol-related.” I am saddened by “fetal alcohol syndrome” in newborn babies. I think alcohol sampling in supermarkets will only invite drinking and driving.

Who will teach our youth?

Mormons don’t drink since the Lord counseled against it in an 1833 revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith. I’m thankful for that kind counsel.

My own experience has been a lifetime of not drinking — I’m an expert at it. I can recommend it without reservation. Not drinking has never cost me a friend, a job, a sale, a marriage, my health, or any loss of sleep worrying that I did something stupid or immoral.

I graduated from the university that has just topped the Princeton Review’s “stone-cold sober” colleges list for 11 years in a row.

Nobody — nobody — has more fun than BYU students, and, hey, they remember it the next day. They are taught in their youth and they choose to live that way, and it works.

Will parents really pay good money to send their children to universities that practically guarantee that students will be exposed to heavy drinking, the sooner the better, while trying to get an education?

On the home front, hurrah for students like Kaila Allen at Gig Harbor High who are taking a stand against underage drinking with Students Against Destructive Decisions.

And thanks to Officer Lynn Mock and her associates at the Gig Harbor Police Department for seminars and Party Patrols during the graduation season.

Sadly, teens are still smoking and drinking in a time when we should know better. From the gospel of John Wayne: “Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”

College presidents: If students are old enough to join the Army, they are old enough to learn that you can live a whole and happy life without drinking.

Who will have the courage to teach them?

Reach Alfred Gunn, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Gig Harbor, at alf.gunn@juno.com or visit www.mormon.org.