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WVU president favors lower drinking age

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU President E. Gordon Gee said if he were king for a day, he would lower the drinking age to 18, a possible fix to universities’ binge-drinking problems.

During a meeting with TheDPost.com’s Editorial Board on Monday, Feb. 16, when referring to the drinking age raise, he said that “when we moved from 18 to 21 [drinking ages] … the university can no longer set rules … you can’t drink, that’s the rule because that is the law.”

Gee, a devout Mormon who “has never touched a drop of alcohol in his life,” said he saw first-hand the drinking age transition when he was serving as president of Vanderbilt University, in Tennessee.

“If we could work toward a responsible drinking age,” he said, “where the university would take much more responsibility … we could have a much better environment…

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