Is there one comprehensive answer to the problem of underage drinking?
A Saugus couple is serving jail time for a drinking party that was attended by dozens of minors in 2013. Their children, a high school graduate and a 19-year old, invited friends over, resulting in the hospitalization of one high school student. Incidents like this one are all too common, and beg the question—are teenagers going to drink, regardless of the rules? Meanwhile the problem permeates college campuses where programs like The Amethyst Initiative, supported by 135 college presidents, calls for the reconsideration of the legal drinking age. Should college students 18 and younger be allowed to drink alongside their 21 year-old peers?
Paul Reville is the former Massachusetts secretary of education, and the Francis Keppel professor of practice of policy and administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also leads the Education Redesign Lab, an initiative designed to re-envision 21st-century education. Reville joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on Boston Public Radio to discuss the dilemma of underage drinking.
“I empathize with the dilemma of college administrators who are charged with enforcing the law in a very complex situation, where they have people from age groups 21 and above in the same environment, and it’s virtually impossible to control under those circumstances,” Reville said. “The idea that we would make some kind of a policy exemption or waiver or special circumstance there makes some sense to me, but that by itself is also privileging college kids over other people.”
According to Reville, there is data supporting very different positions on both sides of this issue, considering both what it means to be an adult, and what dangers adulthood poses. “I have seen the numbers on fatalities and driving, and it’s hard to walk away from them,” Reville said. “If you didn’t have that in the back of your mind, the proposals to bring it down to 18—after all, that’s when we have people serving in the military, giving their life for their country, and so there are a whole bunch of other risks associated with adulthood, and I guess that’s one we should take, too.”
“I think administrators in K-12 schools don’t have much choice,” Reville said. “It’s illegal, and they’re not supposed to tolerate it at any level, so they do the best they can, but it’s like fingers in a leaking dam. It’s really hard to plug it when the culture around it is encouraging it.”
Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel professor of practice of policy and administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also leads the Education Redesign Lab, an initiative designed to re-envision 21st-century education. He is a former Massachusetts secretary of education. To hear more from his interview with BPR, click on the audio link above.
