By Peter K. Ilchuk

Are eighteen-year-olds as ready to assume the responsibilities of adulthood as those at twenty-one? Should they be nationally eligible to vote? To make contracts? To enter into marriage without parental consent? These and other pertinent questions were discussed by a group of high school senior editors in a special interview held in the GEORGIA BULLETIN office last week.

The discussion was prompted by recent moves on the part of Rep. Charles A. Weltner of Georgia to introduce into the United States Congress a bill to give eighteen-year-olds the vote nationally, and of Governor Carl Sanders to lower the state law affecting contracts to eighteen.

Evenly divided on the question, many arguing points were brought up, “Because a person is twenty-one,” says Thomas Nerney, co-editor of St. Pius X Golden Lines, “Does not mean he automatically assumes maturity.” Andrew Hill, co-editor of Drexel Tattler, maintained that not only maturity, but also experience was necessary. “At twenty-one a person has at least gained some of the experience necessary to assume his position as an adult,” he said.

However is the right to vote or make contracts a question of experience and maturity. Penny Mickelbury, co-editor of the Drexel paper stated that “some adults are less responsible than people at eighteen.” And how can we fix a definite time for maturity; many people are totally immature at twenty or thirty or forty. Certainly with present day education and advancement, youths at eighteen are much better prepared to meet the onslaught of the world at eighteen than were their parents thirty years ago.

Pressures are being put on high school youths in their sophomore and junior year to start thinking about life ahead of them. They observed college is a veritable Sword of Damascus hanging over their head the last two years of high school. College entrance exams are becoming tougher and placement in quality colleges exceedingly difficult.

The question was raised that perhaps a semester course during senior year in high school briefly touching on money management, laws binding in contracts and voting rights could be introduced to partially substitute for the “experience” that might be needed.

A natural aspect of this problem is whether teenagers at eighteen should be allowed to purchase alcoholic beverages. However, the difficulty here is not whether they should be permitted to purchase them but how. As Rosemary Hurayt, editor of the D’Youvillite, it isn’t a problem for a teenager to purchase liquor. Many stores will sell it to you or persons are readily available to purchase it for you.” It is a well-known fact that a great majority of people under twenty-one purchase and drink alcoholic beverages. Andrew Hill suggested that perhaps if the illegal purchase of liquor was not present “a lot of the thrill might be taken out of drinking just for the sake of drinking under age.” It seems that many drink just to show that “they can get it and hold it.”

Nevertheless all aspects must be considered very carefully by the legislators. At a time when many so-called minors can fight and die for their country at the age of eighteen, nineteen or twenty, in Viet Nam, they should not be denied their right to vote or assume the responsibilities of adulthood. Certainly the task of a soldier in war is not something that can be maintained by children. Yet this is exactly what is done when laws fail to recognize the eighteen, nineteen, or twenty-year-old as an adult.

Several states, Georgia among them, permits the vote at eighteen. Also several states permit marriage without parental consent, purchase of liquor, and contracts to be made by people over eighteen, but under twenty-one. With such variances in state laws can it be said that certain youths are fully capable to accept the responsibilities of adulthood in one part of the country, but in this state you are a minor?

As Tom Nerney so aptly stated, “Adults are demanding that we face up to our responsibilities and act adult, yet they are denying us the means and right to do so.”