Though turning 21 is a ticket to legal drinking, interviews with students and experts reveal that reaching this milestone only lessens alcohol consumption among students.

‘Before I turned 21, I certainly drank a lot,’ said Woo Jin Koh, a 24-year-old sophomore. ‘Once I turned 21, I didn’t drink as much.’

The theory that drinking patterns of students change when they are able to buy and consume alcohol legally was confirmed by a 2000 study in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine titled ‘Environmental Correlates of Underage Alcohol Use and Related Problems of College Students.’

With the return of Operation Prevent and bar raids to the Syracuse University Hill, crowds making the crawl to Marshall Street each weekend may consist of more legal drinkers and less from the underage demographic.

The change in drinking habits after the 21st birthday is prevalent on college campuses across the country, said Department of Public Safety Major Grant Williams.

Yet when it comes to arrests and disciplinary action, the number of underage students involved is ‘certainly not any less than those 21 and older,’ the assistant director of crime prevention and public relations said.

Enforcement such as the recent bar raids may scare underage students away from breaking drinking laws, but Williams doesn’t believe it is enough.

‘I don’t condone young people breaking the law, but we need to bring a sense of sensitivity to this issue,’ he said. He added that providing better education on the effects of harmful drinking habits would be a better solution than using force.

It is the drinking laws – not the amount of educational information – that needs to change, said junior Meghan Lisson.

‘In Europe, people don’t binge drink like we do,’ Lisson said.

She argues that drinking age laws cause excessive drinking among students who cannot legally buy alcohol but have easy access to it. She is not surprised that gaining legal access to alcohol reduces an individual’s binge drinking.

But experts say the youngest students have the most trouble holding their liquor.

About 50 percent of students affected by alcohol poisoning annually are freshmen, said Dr. Dessa Bergen-Cico, assistant professor in the department of health and wellness.

After the large majority of freshmen cases, a quarter of alcohol poisoning instances involve sophomores while the remaining instances are nearly split between juniors and seniors, she said.

Not knowing boundaries is the biggest issue for freshmen, Bergen-Cico said.

‘Seventy to 75 percent of freshmen come to SU with experience drinking in high school,’ said Bergen-Cico, adding that while drinking is underground in high school years, in college it is part of the normal social life.

Another distinctive parallel exists between increased alcohol consumption and sexual assault. The first six weeks of the fall semester show the highest rate of sexual assaults, Bergen-Cico said. Most of the victims were first-year female students, and most of those cases involved alcohol consumption.

Increased alcohol consumption poses an increased risk in other attacks as well, such as robbery and assault.

‘As alcohol consumption goes up, the risk of being victimized increases as well,’ Bergen-Cico said.

As students mature, they realize safer limits and moderate drinking more, Bergen-Cico said.

‘When alcohol is harder to access, students are going to drink as much as they can when they have it,’ Bergen-Cico said. ‘Students are a lot more socially mature when they turn 21.’

Junior John Troynousky, who is under 21, believes that the ability to drink legally does not match the excitement of getting to that point.

‘There’s a lot of hype to get to that plateau, and then it’s not so great,’ he said.

Published on November 4, 2007 at 12:00 pm