Amethyst Initiative

Most people know by now that many college Presidents and Chancellors have signed on to a movement calling for a reduction of the drinking age. With the name Amethyst coming from the Greeks mythology where said stone would protect the Greeks from there own drunkenness. Important to note as this will affect the Greek communities at these institutions directly, but before we get to that let's take a look back at 1984 and see how this began.

The National minimum Drinking Age Act passed Congress in the summer of 1984 any state that did not adopt 21 as the minimum drinking age was deprived of 10%, now 5%, of the highway funds it may attain.

In 1987 South Dakota challenged the constitutionality of the Act in South Dakota v. Dole naming Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole as the defendant as her office was responsible for enforcing the legislation. S. Dakota, a state where at the age of 19, teens could purchase beer with only a 3.2% alcohol content. The Act was challenged on the grounds that it violated the 21st amendment, which repealed prohibition, and the 10th amendment, preventing federal regulation of states. However the Supreme court upheld the act 7-2, saying that withholding highway funds was only to pressure states, and did not compel them and that the 21st did not garuntee the right for persons 18 to drink.

So then what? Teens stayed away from alcohol until 21? Obviously not, it went underground and then it eventually became a problem for the Universities to deal with. Institutions were blindsided by reports of students dieing from alcohol poisoning, violence and sexual abuse related to drinking, the current National Inter-Fraternal Council President says he deals on average with 20 issues a week relating to the above. Being that the most Greek communities dominate or are a large part of the social scene, and most have a limited self-governing system--meaning that they enforce and can make their own laws but answer to the University and subsequently take their cue from the University's Administration--Universities only course of action besides handing out leaflets, was to then regulate the Greeks. It worked for a time, they asked the Greeks to have only BYOB parties, to register them with the respective Greek offices, have lists of all who are attending complete with birthdays and limit the amount people can bring in to parties.

During this time, however, a new binge drinking culture began emerging at Universities one that still remains today. Universities were in a difficult position, they couldn't stop students from drinking, but still were confronted by drinking related incidents. The breaking point and realization that this was a serious problem came not in 2004 when Middlebury Pres. John McCardell, Jr. wrote a notable article in the New York Times, but later in 2007 when the Dean of Students and 2 school officials from the University of Ryder in New Jersey, were charged in relation to a student's death at a fraternity from drinking, he had a BAC of .426. The Mecer County Prosecutor who filed the charges had this to say "The ramifications of this for colleges and universities in New Jersey, and across the country, is that it will send some kind of message that the standards of college life, when it relates to alcohol, need to be policed carefully." The message was heard and Universities realized that not only were their actions were not working but more improtantly the age limit was ineffective. Soon if they are not talking with their students and drinking they will be talking to the police.