Past Tense: Drinking Age

In 1964, a truck used to roll through Harvard Yard selling sandwiches. One day, when the truck arrived, a freshman asked the vendor, “But where can I get a beer?” Without hesitation, the driver gave the student the name and number of a “business.” Within 15 minutes, another delivery truck rolled into the Yard with a case of beer, delivering it to his freshman dorm.

In 1964, the legal drinking age in Massachusetts was the same as it is today. “It’s more than the laws that have changed,” says compuer science professor Harry R. Lewis ’68 as he relates the story above. “It’s the whole culture surrounding the laws.”

Throughout these years, whether a student was 18 or 20 had little impact on his or her ability to obtain alcohol on campus, or to drink at university-affiliated functions. The drinking age would be lowered to 18 in 1973, where it would remain until raised to 20 in 1979, and ultimately 21 in 1984. But in general, alumni say, regardless of the law in practice, rules around drinking were not as intense as they are now. Neither, they add was the drinking itself, particularly compared to today.

James ’76, who was granted anonymity by The Crimson because he did not feel he could speak freely on the record, recalls his house masters serving beer with donuts at their regular events. “Or maybe it was cider and donuts,” he says. “I can’t remember, but if it was beer and donuts, I would have believed that.”James’s hazy recollections are not, as he suggests, simply a measure of the number of years that have passed since his time in Eliot House. Similar gaps in memory persist for many alumni of the time—perhaps illustrating the irrelevance of these changes for many.

Clea Simon ’83, for example, who lived through the rapidly rising drinking age, recalls, “I don’t really feel like it made a difference in my drinking.”

In addition, students like Simon were often unsure whether or not they were “grandfathered” into the new laws. When Simon, for example, was an 18-year-old high school senior, she was able to buy a drink at a bar. But by the time she arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1979, Massachusetts had just raised the drinking age from 18 to 20—meaning she could no longer attend the music clubs that had been a part of her social scene until that point. Still, though, Simon wasn’t entirely certain that she would have been turned away; in general, students were often unsure whether they could maintain their prior legal status, as the drinking age rose faster than their own.

While legal changes were often straightforward, responses on campus were less so. The Yard did not dry up and re-soak overnight. In fact, in the spring of 1981, Lewis’s undergraduate head TF walked into Science Center C in the middle of Lewis’s AM 110 (now CS 51) lecture, wheeling in a keg with a stack of plastic cups. The two proceeded to pour beer and pass it out to the entire class.While clearly not every professor was serving students alcohol in a classroom setting, those that did faced little retribution: Lewis was granted tenure that year.

In fact, there were many regular occasions on which students and faculty might drink together. In the 70s and 80s, a Wednesday evening might play host to what was known as a Master’s Sherry. Not unlike today’s study breaks, as Simon remembers, you’d descend to the masters’ residence to grab something to eat, until, two hours later, you’d realize it was 10 p.m. and time to get back to work. In addition to the usual cheddar, triscuits, or the occasional homemade sherry trifle at Christmastime, though, students were provided with an open bar. Those under 21 were treated no differently than those 21 and over. Because drinking in a family setting was less regulated under the law than in public, House Masters had the capacity to act in loco parentis, or in place of parent figures.

“We learned to drink around our elders,” explains Michael McClung ’83. At Master’s open houses, with their open bars, he admits that there were “absolutely people who took it too far.”

“But the good thing about that,” he continues, “was that it happened in front of everyone. It was all done in the social construct of saying, ‘Wow, don’t be like that guy, that was really embarrassing.’” Among both peers and elders, he remembers not feeling monitored, but rather belonging to part of a community to which he had an affectionate responsibility.

Of course, students drank outside of adult company as well. But even these interactions seem to have had a different dynamic than they do today. James recalls nights at the Delphic club—which he is quick to clarify as having been a “very, very different” kind of place then—with one glass of scotch, a pipe, and a game of backgammon. McClung thinks back to the biweekly parties his blocking group threw senior year on Cabot House’s roof, with nearly 100 kids, 12 kegs, music, and dancing. He claims that no one ever vomitted in the suite or had to be restrained, arrested, or sent to UHS. Neither of the two men recall binge drinking as a regular occurrence.

“I think that we have done our children a disservice by making alcohol something having to be done in secret,” says McClung. “I think instead of teaching kids to drink in moderation responsibly, we teach them to find whatever it is they can, hide, and drink as much as possible quickly before they’re found out.”

As a member of the Harvard community with a different kind of responsibility, Ryan Travia, the director of the Department of Health Promotion & Education and the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services, claims that lowering the drinking age today is not the solution to the university’s substance abuse problems. Contrary to the memories and anecdotes of Harvard grads, he explains that research shows little change in binge rates or quantities consumed over the past three decades. According to Travia, comparative studies with European countries—often championed for less rigid, less unhealthy relationships with alcohol—reveal rates of alcohol abuse, alcoholism, and sexual assault to be, in fact, lower in the United States. He explains that Harvard’s philosophy is to treat alcohol as a health issue.

Indeed, in the 30 years since the class of 1983 graduated, institutional support and programming for alcohol-related issues has mushroomed. Some Harvard alumni, though, suggest that the issue is rooted in a deeper, more pervasive campus culture.

“I wonder sometimes,” says James, “if the instantaneousness of social media has actually made kids less able to interact when they’re together. And so the alcohol binge-drinking things helps them overcome that.” Today, even if not every episode of drinking is a heavy one, moderation rarely stands the test of a Friday night after a week of multiple papers, or a dearth of text messages from a crush. And in a rapidly moving academic culture, where students only have limited time allocated for relaxation or connection, it is easy for Harvard students to opt for the most efficient way to blow off steam; there isn’t time to kick back with one glass of scotch, a pipe, and a game of backgammon.

While many factors account for this change, it is difficult to deny the significance of a shift from open, adult-sanctioned alcohol use to what Harvard alumni call a disturbing trend toward alcohol abuse. According to McClung , a recent return to his alma mater, and a first-hand experience of current student social life and drinking, underlined these changes. “The difference was palpable,” he says. “It was not healthy.”