The Amethyst Initiative: an Open Letter
I just sent the following letter to the president of my undergraduate alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College, urging him to sign the Amethyst Initiative. The Initiative seeks to encourage a national debate on the legal drinking age. As I note in my letter, signing the Initiative does not commit a president to supporting a lower drinking age; it says that they support open debate on the issue. In turn, I urge you to send a similar letter/e-mail to the president of your alma mater; if they've already signed, send them a note of support, because MADD is evidently starting up a campaign to deluge them and their boards with negative mail. This is important. The 21 LDA is not working; dangerous drinking is taking place at campuses at an alarming rate, and those bad practices continue after graduation. We need to discuss how to change the drinking culture in the U.S., and this is a terrific place to start.
(Oh, and...apparently President Fry's on vacation; I got an auto-response to my e-mail that he was out of the office for a few weeks and would respond as soon as he could. I look forward to it.)
Dear President Fry,
As a Franklin & Marshall alumnus, Class of 1981, I would like to encourage you to consider signing the Amethyst Initiative (http://www.amethystinitiative.org/). I'm sure you're familiar with it after the nationwide coverage the initiative received this week: the Initiative seeks to encourage an honest, open, unemotional debate on the legal drinking age, currently a de facto national level at the age of 21.
Signing the Initiative does not commit you to any policy -- a lower drinking age, changes in drinking age enforcement, alcohol education programs, etc. It merely...
