The Amethyst Initiative, a statement calling for open public discourse on the federally mandated drinking age of 21, has been signed by presidents from more than 130 American colleges and universities over the past four months, receiving significant attention from the media.

But Stanford won’t be signing onto the initiative.

President John L. Hennessy said in a phone interview with The Weekly that he is “sympathetic” to the goals of the initiative and would welcome debate on the subject of the drinking age, but will not be signing on.

“I think it is extremely unfortunate that they moved forward without making a strong statement about DUI laws,” Hennessy said. “It doesn’t make sense to move forward without that tie.”

Ralph Castro, manager of the University’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program, agrees that the initiative lacks some necessary provisions.

“If they lowered it arbitrarily it wouldn’t necessarily be effective in reducing high-risk drinking,” he said of the drinking age. “There would have to be a lot of work on the front end to get it down.”

“The problem now,” Castro continued, “is we don’t necessarily have standardized education for alcohol.” He suggested that a hypothetical lowering of the drinking age be accompanied by a permit system akin to that which exists for driving, including mandatory education and a gradual increase in privileges.

Despite the problems pointed out by Hennessy and Castro, the initiative does seem to be succeeding in its mission to increase public debate over the drinking age.

“We’re trying to get people to support the general idea of debate,” said Grace Kronenberg, assistant to the director of Choose Responsibility, the advocacy group behind the statement. “It’s an issue that most Americans have seen as settled over the past 25 years,” she said, referencing the drinking age.

The support of a number of college presidents has launched countless editorials regarding the drinking age, and has sparked a frenzy of media coverage. While the initiative may be far from creating any actual changes in the law, it is getting a lot of attention.

“Twenty-one is not working,” reads the statement. It calls for “an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.”

In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, mandating that 10 percent of allotted federal highway aid be withheld from states setting a legal drinking age of less than 21. In 1982, only 14 states maintained a drinking age of 21, but by 1988, every state in the union had adopted that limit.

California is slated to receive $3.3 billion in federal highway aid for fiscal year 2009.

Experts argue over the impact the increased drinking age has had on drinking behavior among 18- to 20-year-olds. But proponents of the 21-year limit point to significant decreases in alcohol-related deaths for that age group since 1984. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the law has saved 25,000 lives, including an estimated 900 in 2006.

MADD has lambasted the petition and its signatories, calling it a “misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of the 21 law.”

“It is deeply disappointing to me,” said MADD National President Laura Dean-Mooney in a press release, “that many of our educational leaders would support an initiative without doing their homework on the underlying research and science.”

MADD, in conjunction with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), has called on the presidents to remove their names from the statement, encouraging MADD supporters to pressure them. Signatories report being inundated by hundreds of identical emails from MADD supporters.

At least two presidents have removed their names from the list in the past week, though about 30 added their signatures over that period. The 129 current signatories include the presidents of Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Ohio State, Pomona, Santa Clara University and Tufts.

“This is not a simple question,” wrote Duke President Richard H. Brodhead in a statement on the Amethyst Initiative website. “But the current answer is also not an effective solution to the problem.”

Pomona President David Oxtoby wrote, “I support this initiative because it will allow our colleges to engage in real education of our students about responsible use of alcohol, as well as model moderate behavior.

“Treating college students as adults will help them to make more responsible decisions,” he concluded.

Castro noted that drinking-related problems on campus have declined significantly in recent years, a shift he attributes to an increase in the University’s alcohol education efforts.

For the past three years, incoming freshmen have been required to complete a two-hour online alcohol education course called AlcoholEdu. Castro said Stanford has also stepped up alcohol training for residential staff.

“We’ve seen some very dramatic changes over the past four years,” he said, citing a 67-percent drop in on-campus medical transports for alcohol-related reasons.

Asked about the potential effects of a lowered drinking age on University policy, Castro said, “There might be stricter rules in place.”

“As an institution of higher education, our first responsibility is to educate students,” he explained. But with a lower drinking age, and an accompanying expectation that legal drinkers abide by laws governing public behavior, he suggested that Stanford might shift its focus away from tolerant instruction toward enforcement and punishment.

Though pleased with the national media attention, Choose Responsibility has been frustrated by what it characterizes as a misunderstanding of the initiative’s goals, and the “staunch, knee-jerk response that it’s received.”

“It’s not calling for a lower drinking age, not calling for an 18-year-old drinking age,” Kronenberg said.

“It needs to be objective and fair,” she said of public discourse on the drinking age. “And I don’t think those adjectives are at play right now.”