Approximately 100 colleges and universities in the United States have signed the Amethyst Initiative, a movement in support of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. The UW is not among the signatories.

According to the Amethyst Initiative website, 129 colleges and universities have supported the movement that was launched in July. Pacific Lutheran University is the only school in Washington that has agreed to the change.

“We don’t think it’s a good idea for basically two reasons,” said the UW spokesman Norm Arkans.

While drinking on college campuses is a recognizable problem because of students’ excessive drinking, lowering the drinking age would only exasperate the problem because of easier access to alcohol.

Also, while underage drinking and fake IDs are common throughout colleges and society in general, lowering the drinking age may merely exacerbate the two problems in high schools and even middle schools, said Arkans.

Evidence also may not support lowering the drinking age.

In 1988, after all 50 states had changed the legal drinking age to 21, there was a drop in the number of alcohol consumption and traffic crashes, said Jason Kilmer, the UW associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

A concern for those signing the Amethyst Initiative is binge drinking among college students. But pointing out the Monitoring the Future study, which looked at binge drinking from ages 18 to 45, Kilmer noted that “it doesn’t seem clear that binge drinking necessarily happens, or doesn’t happen, because of the legal drinking age.”

Some of the UW students have mixed feelings about the idea of lowering the drinking age.

19-year-old Felicia Edwards questions whether lowering the drinking age will impact drinking in colleges.

“I guess more students will feel free [to drink], however the ones that want to drink will, no matter the age, and the ones who don’t feel the urge to drink, wont.”

21-year-old Julia Yeh thinks the drinking age should stay at 21.

“Eighteen is way young,” Yeh said. “Teens that young don’t exactly know what they’re doing. Technically they’re adults, yes, but not all of them are mature.”

15 years as a police veteran and now a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and the Law, Societies and Justice program, Jonathan Wender provides a multidisciplinary perspective of drinking.

American culture has a mixed view of alcohol. While it condemns underage drinking, it celebrates heavy drinking in adulthood and considers it socially acceptable in certain contexts, said Wender. “Society tolerates a great deal of heavy drinking.”

However, in a different culture, kids may drink wine with their parents at dinner but learn at a young age to drink responsibly and that drunkenness is intolerable, said Wender.

He emphasizes that the law will not solve the problems of drinking in colleges.

“My underlying message, which I emphasize in every class I teach is until American society comes to grips with the cultural contradictions that underlie our drinking habits, you aren’t going to change anything,” said Wender. “We need to instill in Americans of all ages a clear sense, an engrained sense, that drinking to the point of crisis level behavior is something shameful and something unacceptable.”

Reach reporter Joy Yagi at news@dailyuw.com.