For Schnelz and other MSU students, the drinking age debate is an important one. And now, students aren’t the only ones examining the topic.

College administrators are banding together to influence lawmakers to review the current policies. The Amethyst Initiative, started in July by John McCardell, president emeritus of Middlebury College and founder of nonprofit organization Choose Responsibility, aims to do just that.

On Wednesday, the petition had signatures from 129 college presidents and chancellors, including administrators at Duke University, Ohio State University and the University of Maryland.

“Twenty-one isn’t working,” said Grace Kronenberg, assistant to the director of Choose Responsibility, which advocates lowering the drinking age. “It contributes to a culture of secretive binge drinking. It’s pretty clear that this law isn’t doing what it’s aimed to do.”

Binge drinking, as defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration to .08 percent or higher.

Students looking for MSU to jump on board won’t see Spartans ink on the petition, though.

“(MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon) has not signed the initiative,” said Kent Cassella, MSU director of media relations. “However, she agrees that there needs to be national discussion about whether the current drinking age is appropriate, as well as a discussion about the effectiveness of alcohol education programs.”

Although Simon has not signed the petition, others in the MSU community have taken sides. East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said lowering the drinking age would be a mistake.

“There’s obviously a problem with binge drinking,” Wibert said. “I don’t know if making alcohol legal would solve that. It would create a whole new bunch of drinkers in the high schools that otherwise wouldn’t have access.”

Hospitality business junior Jake Hogberg said giving 18-year-olds the ability to drink could be a mess.

“It would increase alcohol-related accidents, no doubt about it,” Hogberg said. “If I was underage, I would love to have the drinking age at 18, but now that I’m 21, I look back on it and I don’t know if I would like it.”

Cassella said Simon doesn’t think the issue is quite as straightforward as simply calling for lower the drinking age, and Wibert agrees.

“I actually think that MSU students are drinking less now than they have in the past,” Wibert said.

“This Welcome Week is a perfect example. The parties were smaller and there were considerably less incapacitated people than in the past.”