At last, sanity: John McCardell, the president emeritus of Middlebury College, argues that the drinking age of 21 actually fosters irresponsible drinking, and says that the drinking age should be lowered to 18.

Well…yes.

I remember all too well when that ostensible practitioner of limited government, Ronald Reagan, started forcing states to raise their drinking age or lose federal highway monies. I’ve never quite been able to reconcile the idea that you can send 18-year-olds off to war to kill people but they can’t have a beer. And I’ve always thought that if you teach kids how to drink moderately—as, say, the French do—you can actually cut down on alcohol abuse and stupid drunken accidents.

McCardell thinks that, on campuses, a drinking age of 21 infantilizes students, encouraging immature behavior with alcohol and disrespect for law generally. Furthermore, an “enforcement only” policy makes school administrations adversaries of students and interferes with their attempts to acquaint students with pertinent information, such as the neurological effects of alcohol on young brains. He notes that 18-year-olds have a right to marry, adopt children, serve as legal guardians for minors and purchase firearms from authorized dealers, and are trusted with the vote and military responsibilities. So, he says, it is not unreasonable to think that they can, with proper preparation, be trusted to drink.

Just to repeat:

McCardell thinks that, on campuses, a drinking age of 21 infantilizes students….

Judging from the item below, he’s either right, or that’s just the way students like it….

Wang Chung is back in the studio….

She’s not easily scared off, is she?

Theda Skocpol makes her case for herself as dean true curricular reform.

Since when has it become the role of the university to make its students feel better when something bad happens?

The Crimson reports that some students are frustrated with the University for not publicly expressing its sympathy for the Virginia Tech victims and their families.

The University’s decision not to issue a letter immediately following the events left some students critical of the approach. Harvard officials yesterday posted a statement of sympathy online and announced a service to remember the victims at 10 p.m. tonight in Memorial Church.

…UC Representative Jon T. Staff V ’10 criticized the administration’s approach.

“Harvard certainly hasn’t done enough to respond to the tragedies that have happened in Virginia over the past week,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the administration to send some sort of message to the Harvard community and the Virginia Tech community about what happened.”

Um….why? Other than the fact that Harvard and Virginia Tech are both universities, Harvard has no connection to what happened. Why does the Harvard “community” need a statement that “Harvard” is sad? Of course people are sad. But Harvard is not Oprah; its job is not to hold its students’ hands and make them feel better. Nor, frankly, would the Virginia Tech community give a damn if Harvard sends them “some sort of message.”

This episode suggests two things. First is how completely modern students have embraced the concept of in loco parentis, in which the university is supposed to play the role of parent to today’s youth.

This infantilizing relationship between university and student, so challenged by students of the 1960s and 1970s, has come back in full force. It is only challenged when students lament alcohol restrictions during The Game. Now they want the University to give them a hanky. You can’t have it both ways.

The second lesson of this episode is that it is a display in the narcissism of the young. What is so singular about this tragedy that the university must publicly nurse its charges through their grief? The fact that the gunman killed (primarily) students. Yet yesterday 171 Iraquis were killed in a car bomb explosion in Baghdad. Do any Harvard undergrads care? Where, as Bob Dole once said, is the outrage?

You have to see this Fox News obit of Kurt Vonnegut to believe it…the nastiest piece of work I’ve seen in quite some time.

Bombings Kill at Least 171 Iraqis in Baghdad

The Times isn’t the only institution trying to exploit the tragedy at Virginia Tech for its own ends—now the Church of Scientology is sending “grief counselors,” i.e., missionaries….

Oh, and President Bush, who opposes gun control, also went to the campus yesterday…..

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P.S. In a comment below, I mentioned that Facebook would be an appropriate forum for the expression of grief. Someone else had the same idea.

John Huth. Berkeley Ph.D. fascinated by the experimental origins of electroweak symmetry. Yes, you heard it right. Electroweak symmetry. (Like you don’t know what that is.)

Discuss.

John Corzine wasn’t wearing his seat belt even though his SUV driver was going 91 miles an hour.

What’s wrong with this sentence?

1) No Democratic governor should be driving around in an SUV that is not a hybrid. (Corzine’s Suburban was not.)
2) …wasn’t wearing his seat belt…even though SUVs are notoriously unsafe at high speeds.
3) …91 miles an hour. That put not only Corzine at risk, but everyone else on the highway.

New Jersey troopers driving the governor around are apparently allowed to break the speed limit when necessary because of “security concerns.”

(The extension of “security concerns” to virtually every elected official in American life, no matter how plebeian, is a great unreported story. It’s really just an excuse for assuming anti-democratic privileges such as bodyguards and the right to speed.)

Why was Corzine rushing so? He had to get to a meeting with the Rutgers women’s basketball team…..

In what New York City neighborhood can you now find FedEx-Kinkos, Starbucks, Staples, Chuck E. Cheese, Children’s Place, Citarella, Old Navy and H &M?

In Harlem—which is, coincidentally, my neighborhood.

As the Times reports, the pace of gentrification is astonishingly fast in Harlem. I have mixed feelings about the prevalence of national chains in the mix, but make no mistake: This is a good thing. These businesses aren’t forcing out interesting local shops. They’re taking over underutilized and empty spaces, and putting dreary, dirty and depressing shops out of business. And they’re bringing a new energy and vibrancy to 125th Street. And make no mistake—the people who’ve lived here for some time need shops such as Staples and Old Navy. For too long, they’ve had to travel south to 96th Street or thereabouts in order to purchase some basic goods.

Now, if Columbia would just start building its new campus…this is going to be the hottest neighborhood in the city.