To the editor:

Today’s college students have had more taken away from them than they can ever know.

My dad tells stories of things he did 25 years ago at ISU and I cannot believe that sort of stuff was allowed to go on.

I also read minutes from my house’s old meetings and the stuff that they did was outrageous.

Because of political correctness and a flurry of civil lawsuits, nothing that compares to that stuff could ever take place today.

If that was not enough, Rep. Rosemary Thomson thinks it is her duty to strip away another freedom from college students: The right to possession of alcohol in any dorm in the state of Iowa regardless of the owner’s age.

This is a weak attempt to solve a problem that has no easy solution.

Something similar was tried when the drinking age in Iowa was raised to 21.

That cut down on many things my parents might have done, but it also created a new problem in underage drinking.

So far, nobody has been able to come close to enforcing that law, and banning all alcohol in the dorms will only create more problems.

It would also interfere with a constitutional right of students that are 21 years old.

Although I believe attacking alcohol use is the true purpose of this bill, the authors lead us to believe otherwise.

They tell us the reason for banning alcohol is so students can concentrate more easily on their studies.

When has it been up to others to decide what we need to do to get the best education possible?

For somebody to think that he or she knows what is best for us is ludicrous.

As students, we pay large amounts of money to get the best possible education. If we want to waste that opportunity while we are here, so be it.

Despite what Rep. Thomson might say, we are not the ones hindering our education.

We pay several thousand dollars a semester to attend this school, yet we run the risk of getting stuck with a TA that barely speaks English or a professor that only makes sense to graduate students.

If the Iowa legislature is truly concerned about providing us with a quality education, it should invest in something it can control.

Implementing teaching regulations would be much more effective than trying to stop students across the state from consuming alcohol.

College students are young adults who are more than capable of making good decisions. The problem today lies with a group of narrow-minded “older adults.”

I use that term because that is what they are — adults just like us only twice our age.

They are not the only adults, yet that is what they believe. In trying to “enhance our education”, legislators and other “older adults” in positions of power are stripping us of our freedom of choice.

We lack a choice that they had, but that is not enough. Instead of letting us make the choices that affect our lives, we are forced in directions that are supposedly the best for us.

The only thing that is in our best interest is our ability to exercise the freedom of choice that we possess as adults.

To all you “older adults” that think you know what’s best for college students, start acting like adults and give us the credit and responsibility that we deserve.

Travis Sullivan

Freshman

Management information systems