Quote:
Originally posted by PhiPsiRuss
I'm assuming (no Odd Couple quotes, please) that this went hand-in-hand with the lowering of the drinking age. These two trends probably complimented each other nicely.
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Bad assumption. The drinking age didn't suddenly change -- it happened over a number of years. Ohio, where I was, and NY were among the last to change. What caused the final states to change the age was a Federal Highway Act which basically said that states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21 could not receive any Federal Highway Funds.
In Loco Parentis was an issue of whether a university should act as a students parent away from home. Most of the things mentioned by BSUPhiSig were still in place for women when I started college in 1965. They slowly began to relax at about that time. I would credit things like the Women's Movement, the Vietnam War and just the general cultural change that led to things like allowing 18 year olds to vote (1968).
So, it doesn't track to me that as young people were given more responsibility and taking the option to drink away would go hand in hand. Seems to me that they were in direct contradiction. The opposite dyanmic.
For whatever it's worth, one of our long time chapter advisors is the City Attorney in a college town, and it is his opinion that the drinking age for beer should be lowered to eighteen in order to take the "thrill" of "breaking the law" away. It would make things a lot easier on the police and the courts -- at least in that situation.