Published: June 21, 2009 12:28 am      

Guess who turned 21?

College 401 column

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm legal.

On Tuesday I turned one of, if not the most anticipated age for anybody growing up.

21.

Aside from maybe 13 (woohoo I'm a teenager), 21 is the age when pretty much everything becomes available to you. I can now go to restaurants and order a beer, I can gain access to many of the smaller venues here in Austin, and I can just generally be a cooler person. The only thing I can't do is rent a car. Seriously though, 25? Who came up with that idea?

But Monday morning, as I was driving to the place where I'm interning this summer (more on that in a later column), I realized something. At that point, it was about 16 hours until my birthday. And as I was cruising down Burnet Road, I had an epiphany. Nothing in my life was going to drastically change in 16 hours. There wasn't something in my mind getting ready to click into place, some switch preparing to flip the opposite direction and show me some hidden secret about the world. My maturity or responsibility level wasn't going to significantly change in that time until I turned 21. But, according to the government, in 16 hours I would suddenly be legal. In an instant, it'd be okay for me to purchase or consume alcohol.

Three years ago they decided that it's okay for me to purchase and/or use tobacco products, and it was also acceptable for me to vote. I could join the service and go fight for my country, but I couldn't drink or rent a car. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Let me be clear, I'm not arguing that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, nor should the age to rent a car be dropped. My point isn't to make the claim that every high school graduate in existence tries to fight for every day of the year. What I'm saying is that we should do away with the age requirements altogether. Now hold on, before you form an angry mob and hunt me down torches and pitchforks, hear me out. I don't think age should determine when you can drink or when you can vote, but I do think something else should.

The only problem is that I don't know exactly what yet. Somehow we need a system to determine when people are ready to accept the privileges and responsibilities that come with being able to drink, smoke or vote. Or rent a car. When I first started thinking it over, the initial idea I had was to base it on IQ. But that's not fair. There are plenty of people out there who may not be blessed with a mind capable of comprehending quantum physics, but who can analyze issues and think logically enough to vote for president. On the other hand, there are probably some quantum physicists out there who, aside from learning about particles all today, shouldn't be allowed near a drop of alcohol, lest they go berserk and blow up the world with a laser beam.

So IQ's out. What about some form of test? Written sounds kind of ridiculous, especially if it's multiple choice. Circle one: You are A) Very Responsible; B) Somewhat Responsible; C) Not Responsible; or D) Hide the women and children. Short answer is a bit more reasonable, but should we really require folks to write an essay describing why they can rent a car? Then there's an oral test. But how would these things be graded, by a rubric? Should the somewhat fledgling Obama administration start working out the specifics of a drinking exam?

The Guitar Hero franchise is pretty popular, why not base the decision on something like that? Voting Hero, where our players simulate a full day, choosing between the options of eating ice cream and watching Oprah nonstop, playing basketball with friends, or a nice balanced schedule of family, leisure and watching the news to learn about the candidates. How about Rent a car Hero, where our soon-to-be drivers talk to a virtual Enterprise guy, pick out a car (if they go for a BMW, that's points off) and then cruise down Interstate 35, going as fast or as slow as they want. Finally, Drinking Hero. You work out the specifics of that one on your own.

I know these ideas sound pretty ridiculous, but think about the system we have in place now. That's a bit absurd as well, isn't it? Arbitrarily picking a single age that applies to everyone, despite the fact that everyone has different learning speeds and maturity levels. I don't want to see ten-year-olds in bars just because they passed Drinking Hero or toddlers voting because they made the right choice on a multiple choice exam, but we need to rethink the system. It's been a place for a very long time, but hey, Obama's been preaching Change hasn't he?

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Robert Rich is a senior journalism major at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Westwood High School in 2006. He can be reached via e-mail at robert.rich@mail.utexas.edu