Seniors Were Legal to Drink…

It was a “wait, what?” moment.

As I watched the Fox interview with Brett Kavanaugh, something he said just didn’t sound right. His assertion that “And yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there” stopped me in my tracks. I knew we were about the same age. Was he older than me? How could he have been legal to drink when he was a senior in high school?

Finally, I looked up his birthday. Feburary 12, 1965.

So, actually I’m 3 months older. Now I knew that something was off. There are certain rights of passage that you never forget.

We both went to high school in Montgomery County, Maryland, and college in Connecticut. I attended public schools in Maryland and the University of Connecticut (for my first two years). Our difference in age put us in two different graduating high school classes. I was class of 1982 and would turn 18 in November, well after high school graduation. He was class of 1983.

In 1981, given my November birthday, I had no expectation of drinking or going to clubs or bars legally while in high school. I did expect to be able to do so while in college. In 1981, given his February birthday, Kavanaugh did have an expectation to be of legal drinking age while still in high school.

Then in 1982, all of that changed. A law was passed to raise the drinking age. Given the effect it would have on me, here is how I remembered it:

Anyone who turned 18 before June 30, 1982 would be grandfathered in and legal to drink. Anyone who turned 18 after June 30, 1982 would not be legal to drink until age 21.

So now, both Kavanaugh and I, as far as Maryland was concerned, would never be of legal age to drink while in high school.

Let’s take another look at what he volunteered in Fox News interview “… And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there”.  This answer could have been “lawyerly”. If he was drinking as an underclassman in the presence of seniors, though he himself wasn’t legal, those seniors might have been.   It is even possible (though highly unlikely given the times) that as a senior he could have socialized with people who could have been 19 year old high school seniors because their parents held them back in kindergarten – which is a common practice where I currently live – but wasn’t in the early 1970s.   However, during his testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee, he said, in his opening statement:

“My friends and I sometimes got together and had parties on weekends. The drinking age was 18 in Maryland for most of my time in high school, and was 18 in D.C. for all of my time in high school. I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. “

And later in response to a question by prosecutor Rachel Mitchell:

“Yes, we drank beer. My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer. The drinking age, as I noted, was 18, so the seniors were legal, senior year in high school, people were legal to drink, and we — yeah, we drank beer, and I said sometimes — sometimes probably had too many beers, and sometimes other people had too many beers.”

Is he being lawyerly again? Or using double speak? What he says in his opening statement is true. The drinking age would have been 18 during his freshman, sophomore and junior year, i.e. most of his time in high school. But in his response to Ms.  Mitchell’s question, something is amiss.  Note that he never actually says, “I was legal to drink” just that “people were”. In any case, when he was 18 and a senior himself, he was not one of those “people” in Maryland. More importantly, at 17, he would not have been of age to drink in the summer of 1982 – when this alleged event occurred, whether he was in DC or in Maryland.

The effect of listening to his statement, and particularly his answer to Ms. Mitchell, created the impression that he was one of those seniors who were legal to drink. Otherwise, why emphasize that point? But now, looking at his words in print, he leaves a lot of wiggle room to deny that he ever said that he himself was legal to drink in high school in Maryland. I have to wonder, what was the point of volunteering this information during the Fox interview and the hearing. Was he trying to pull a fast one?

Connecticut did something similar, by the way. When I got to the University of Connecticut, the drinking age had been raised to 19. So, most Sophomores were legal to drink, but not us Freshmen. (There was no grandfather provision for anyone.) In 1983 Connecticut raised the drinking age to 20, and in 1984 they raised the drinking age, one more time, to 21. So, yeah, I missed out on that too. I transferred to the University of Maryland in my junior year. I was finally able to drink legally as a senior. A college senior.

The point is not that Kavanaugh drank in high school. Many people did and do. The point is that he said, or at least tried to imply, that he was of legal age when he did so. And if he did not outright lie, at the very least, it was an attempt to mislead, which might be another way to say that he was playing fast and loose with the truth.