Everyone who goes to Ohio State knows that underage drinking is as easy as putting a jumbo beer mug to your lips. Beer is cheap, beer is abundant, and the cops usually leave us alone.But what does this situation really say about social and legal attitudes towards underage drinking? Drinking is a universally-recognized part of football Saturdays. And most importantly, the trusty old white hats who could be making a killing on underage drinkers every weekend at the local bars and fraternities choose not to, because they know that they cannot stop the problem.Basically, society and law enforcement have accepted that “college students will be college students” and that this will include 19-year-olds lining up at the kegs.The problem with this situation is that, advantageous though it may be for young beer-swillers, it directly undermines established law and makes a mockery of our respect for the legal system. We learn to evade authorities and have become content with breaking the law. We bend the rules instead of changing them because sidestepping lackadaisical police is easier than openly campaigning for a newer, fairer policy. Why go to the trouble of campaigning for a new law if you can just put your cup down when the police pay a visit? Laws are supposed to reflect social norms and protect us from those who violate them. Obviously, in today’s society, it is a social norm to drink when you are 20. What “normal” adult can honestly say that he or she never drank illegally while under 21? Instead of changing the law to accommodate today’s social climate, we make drinking for those under 21 illegal so we can impose moral pressures on the young which allow us to produce the occasional scapegoat as an example of the evils of drinking. In a speech an R.A. gave to her hall about underage drinking, she told them that she knows it will happen, but that she doesn’t want to see it or hear about it because it is illegal. But what about the really serious issues that she can’t legitimately entertain, like the fact that she doesn’t want to see drinking interfere with our studies?Basically, the attitude society is taking towards underage drinking is sending mixed messages. There are signs all around campus in dorms where all of the residents are under 21 that give guidelines for drinking in moderation. Although the signs say that drinking is illegal for underage adults, they go on to describe rules to drink by. Isn’t this a slightly jumbled signal? Drinking is illegal for you but here is how to do it? And take the campus police. We drink in spite of them, knowing that they won’t bust us. But they are authorities, law enforcers! How can they let us break the rules? It doesn’t make sense. To curb what is termed “the problem of underage drinking,” we must decide what the “problem” is. Is it that young adults abuse alcohol? Or just that they are not 21? Only when we have laws that are logical and enforceable can we even try to take a coherent approach to so complex an issue.
Jessica Weeks is the one Lantern columnist who – so she claims – isn’t also a regular binge drinker.
