As police investigate the
shocking allegations of gang rape levelled against a University
of Virginia fraternity in an unbelievable Rolling Stone
story, UVA administrators have begun assigning blame and proposing
dubious solutions. Suspending all campus fraternity activity, as
UVA President Teresa Sullivan has done, might feel like the right
thing, but it’s probably not constitutional, since students enjoy
the First Amendment right to be a part of clubs.
But I was thrilled to hear one administrator at least
pinpointing the heart of the problem: campus binge-drinking
culture. Unfortunately, that same administrator proposed a solution
that would actually worsen matters. According
ABC News:
A University of Virginia board on Tuesday honed in on alcohol as
a contributing factor in sexual assaults on campus, with one member
calling for more aggressively enforcing the law banning underage
drinking. …Board member Bobbie Kilberg said the school needed to stop
underage drinking, a tall order on nearly any college campus, where
drinking is a rite of passage and students under age 21 have no
trouble getting alcohol.Her suggestion was met with some resistance from student
leaders. Tommy Reid, president of the school’s Inter-Fraternity
Council, said such a ban could push drinking “underground.”
Kilberg is correct that alcohol is the big problem, or at least
a big problem. Campus fraternities often play the role
of black market alcohol distributor; underage students who want to
drink are forced to deal with older fraternity brothers, on their
turf. But enforcing drinking laws more stridently would only worsen
this reality, as everyone familiar with the side effects of various
government-enacted prohibitions on illicit substances will tell
you.
Instead of giving more power to the very sort of people accused
of gang rape at UVA—frat brothers with a monopoly on booze for the
underage crowd—administrators should petition Congress to abolish
the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forces states to
maintain a drinking age of 21. If teens could legally purchase
alcohol and drink in bars, restaurants, or the comfort of their own
dorm rooms, some of the excesses of binge-drinking culture would
die off. And as a bonus, an absurd, nanny statist,
freedom-destroying law would be no more.
Another college administrator—Donald Eastman III, president of
Eckerd College in Florida—recently
sent an e-mail to students urging them to drink less alcohol
and have less sex if they want to avoid being raped. Anyone who
thinks college kids are actually going to take that advice probably
isn’t fit to be running the show at any college in the country. You
can’t tell them what not to do, and you can’t force them not to do
it. The sexual assault problem on college campuses needs a
realistic solution—one that conforms to actual human behavior.
Lowering the drinking age and taking away the incentive for
students to consume alcohol dangerously is the best approach.
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