VIO | Blog Row

There appear to be some significant discrepancies in a recent Flat Hat article regarding President Reveley’s position on the Amethyst Initiative, a pledge that has been signed by several college and university presidents on reopening the debate on the national drinking age. According to AI’s Web site,

the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the problem of irresponsible drinking by young people continues despite the minimum legal drinking age of 21, and there is a culture of dangerous binge drinking on many campuses.

The Amethyst Initiative supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.

The subheader in The Flat Hat’s piece was, “President not sure if reopening drinking age debate would be useful,” and Mr. Reveley is even quoted in the article:

“I haven’t decided whether it would be useful for me to sign the Amethyst Initiative,” Reveley said. “It doesn’t look like many, if any, of the presidents of public colleges and universities in Virginia have signed so far.”

This is quite curious — because in an e-mail between an anonymous student and the president himself, Mr. Reveley had this to say:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Taylor Reveley <taylor@wm.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 5:26 PM
Subject: RE: The Amethyst Act

Thanks!

Appreciate your letting me know about the Senate’s unanimous vote on the Amethyst Initiative. There’s an article in the Flathat that talks about where I am on all this. In my view, the most important part of the article (so far as what I think) comes in its last two paragraphs.

The article’s “sub” headline (”President not sure if reopening drinking age debate would be useful”) isn’t what I think – believe strongly that reopening the debate has been and will be useful. Whether it’s a good idea for me to join the presidents who’ve signed the initiative is a different question, in my view.

You were good to be in touch with me.

Taylor Reveley

It’s possible, I suppose, that there is some nuance that I’m not catching here — but I do believe that there is a distinct difference between Mr. Reveley believing there is no actual efficacy in reopening the debate itself, versus him actually signing his name to a piece of paper to that effect. I agree with the president that those are two distinctly different issues, and for The Flat Hat to conflate them on their front page is unfortunate. Malicious? Certainly not — but it is a product of shoddy reporting.

[NCF]