Fight for your right to party

We all know the argument. It’s pretty much the same one we always use. We can smoke… We all know the argument. It’s pretty much the same one we always use. We can smoke cigarettes. We can get married. But we can’t crack open an Iron City after a long week of class?

Like most social injustices, the roots of this problem are pure politics. Candy Lightener and the organization she founded, MADD, harnessed their grief toward irresponsible drunk drivers to score political points and effectively throw out the baby with the bath water. Under intense pressure from these lobbyists and eager to score family values points in the midst of the equally misguided War on Drugs (which was enacted in the name of eliminating drug use in the United States by 1995), the 1984 National Drinking Age Act effectively tied the drinking age to federal highway funds. It virtually blackmailed all 50 states into accepting President Reagan’s proposal to raise the age to 21 or risk losing significant highway funding.

For those of my friends who see no way that politics or voting affects their everyday lives, I would say that here is a pretty good example. It’s one that we should remember when we hear about a 20-year-old Iraq veteran fined hundreds of dollars for drinking a beer at a friend’s house. We should remember it when we see freshmen puking their guts out all over Forbes Avenue every weekend out of defiance to a society that perceives alcohol to be forbidden fruit, reserved for those who have attained the lofty wisdom that arrives with turning 21. We should remember it when we read about students dying of alcohol poisoning after hours of drinking games in their dorm rooms, the only place where they can drink without fear of appearing in the police blotter. We should remember it when we consider our tuition money paying for campus police whose entire job becomes writing up college students for drinking instead of focusing more aggressively on curbing violent crime.

So, you might ask, where is the motivation for a sustained, organized outcry against such obvious injustices that say eons about the “nanny state” that our culture has manifested in how much we trust our youth? Where are the people who are going to take a stand? Well, duh. It’s happy hour. We’re in Hemmingway’s and Peter’s Pub, laughing about everyone on the outside who can’t make it in yet. After all, once we finally make it, who cares about everyone else? And as we grow older, we care increasingly less. Not our problem.

This is actually the mentality that troubles me the most, even more than a mentality that doesn’t trust parents and schools to instill children with a sense of how to drink responsibly and turn it into a balanced lifestyle, like the vast majority of civilization. This mentality of “sucks for them on the outside” is one that sifts into all matters of political will. History has proven time and again that in order for a people’s voice to be heard, they must stand for themselves. It was blacks refusing to move from table counters in the ’50s that won the Civil Rights Act and white men in suits who merely fell in line with legislation. It was women, not the most articulate of their male champions, who made the difference for themselves by demanding equal rights in the workplace. In order to get the votes you want, you must air your own voice.

Which begets the question as to who will stand up for those who don’t have a voice? Why is the reform of our prison-manufacturing complex or our homeless policies not hot-button issues? Because prisoners and homeless people don’t vote. So to hell with them. Why waste political collateral on issues that aren’t guaranteed to win elections?

I have found, in my experience, that the happiest people in life are very often not those who have everything in their lives ideally as they would like them to be. Rather, they are those who are capable of looking beyond the sphere of their own existence and considering how the world feels to others. When one gives and truly empathizes with the struggles that others are experiencing, it forces one to take stock of and count just how many blessings in life are indeed taken for granted. Spending a Saturday morning in a soup kitchen sure has a way of making a week of heavy homework seem not so bad.

What we need are more people in public life — hell, life in general — like Vermont State Rep. Richard Marron, who circulated a bill advocating the lowering of the drinking age in early 2005 because he believed the current law to be “illogical.” Taking this stand won him little points with his peers in the legislature or with brain-washed family values groups — but it appealed to his sense of standing up for the right thing for those who can’t do it for themselves. That’s what I call a true Profile in Courage and an example that we would be lucky as a society to see more of in all walks of life and occupations.

Grab a red cup, take to the streets and e-mail Daron at djc14@pitt.edu.