The issue of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 has long been in discussion. Would there be repercussions in society if 18-year-olds were given this right or would young people accept their new-found freedom and exercise it responsibly? The next installment of ASI Events’ True Life Series will explore this very issue when The Drinking Age Debate comes to Chumash Auditorium Thursday at 8 p.m.
Last summer, as many as 100 presidents from some of the most prestigious universities in the country – Dartmouth, Syracuse and Duke Universities to name a few – asked lawmakers to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. Although President Baker was not among the presidents who spoke in favor of lowering the drinking age, ASI Events wanted to bring the debate to Cal Poly because they think topic is relevant to college students.
“This is the perfect topic for students because this is directly impacting them,” ASI Program Coordinator Michelle Curro said. “This is ages 18 to 21, those are the ages of students at Cal Poly. This is legislation that could potentially directly impact them and so we thought that this is something thats perfect for the ASI True Life Series.”
The Drinking Age Debate features two speakers, one on each side of the issue. John McCardnell, who will speak in favor of lowering the legal drinking age, is a former college president and the founder of the group Choose Responsibly, which thinks that a lower drinking age will help young people make more responsible decisions about alcohol. Speaking in opposition to a lowered drinking age will be James C. Fell, Senior Program Director of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, who is considered an expert about the societal effects of a lowered drinking age. The two will debate for 45 minutes after which they will take questions from audience members.
Although ASI declined to speculate on expected attendance numbers, ASI Events has used various avenues to spread the word.
“We’ve done a lot of outreach to clubs, sororities and fraternities, health education classes and basically any class that could be somewhat interested in this topic,” Curro said. “We’ve contacted professors and department heads and urged them about it because this is something that really affects every single person on campus, so we want to make sure that the people that are interested in this know about it and are going to attend.”
ASI Events has also passed out fliers in the University Union and the approach seems to be working.
“I have definitely heard a lot of students, when passing out fliers for this event, with different opinions,” music senior and ASI Events member Michael Annuzzi said. “I can just give a flier out to students and immediately they already want to share their opinion.”
The True Life Series started two years ago in an effort to educate students about various controversial issues. The series’ title, True Life, was inspired by the MTV reality show that documents young people with unique lifestyles. Past debates featured topics including pro-life vs. pro-choice, evolution vs. intelligent design, as well as the most popular debate to-date between pornography actor Ron Jeremy and Pastor Craig Gross on the pornography industry.
It was so popular that 3,000 students had to be turned away from Chumash Auditorium because of safety regulations.
“These debates really bring out a cool crowd of students,” Annuzzi said. “We’re in college, we’re in higher education. We all have our own opinions and want to voice our opinions and thoughts about these things. These debates really do allow that to happen.”