Get this: College students drink. Some of them drink even though they aren’t legally allowed to drink. Unfortunately, others binge drink. It’s a problem. But it’s also something that has only been made worse by our country’s absurd requirement that you be 21 years old to buy alcohol — a policy that has driven excessive drinking underground. Now, after 24 years of this failed policy, a group of 129 college presidents and chancellors have gotten together to ask the federal government to reconsider. Not surprisingly, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman is absent from that list. But she shouldn’t be.

Started last year, the Amethyst Initiative — as the petition drive is called — is taking aim at the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act. That law effectively raised the minimum drinking age from 18 to 21 years by penalizing states with a 10-percent cut in federal highway funding if they didn’t set their drinking age at 21 or above. When it comes up for renewal in the U.S. Congress next year, the 129 signatories on the initiative are asking Congress to do something it doesn’t often do: its job. They want Congress to truly weigh the costs and benefits of keeping the drinking age at 21 and make a decision accordingly.

A debate — that’s all the Amethyst Initiative is asking for. It isn’t asking Congress to make the drinking age 18 again. It isn’t saying that the current drinking age doesn’t have its benefits, including reduced drunk driving. It is saying that something isn’t working right now, so let’s take a look at it.

Yet many college presidents, including our own, haven’t joined the Amethyst Initiative. Undoubtedly, some are worried that signing will brand their university as a binge-drinking party school. And certainly there are some of those schools on the list. (We’re looking at you, Ohio State.) But there are many more places, like Butler University and Oglethorpe University, where binge drinking hasn’t been particularly troublesome.

Why else, then, would some college presidents shy away from this petition? Because some want to continue to address underage drinking with prohibition and paternalistic education efforts. That’s the University of Michigan's strategy. And for many students, it works — ask almost someone on campus what “Stay in the blue” means, and that person can probably spew the University’s responsible alcohol use rhetoric back at you.

But Coleman is doing University students a disservice by pretending that there aren’t other options to explore. Reducing the minimum drinking age and raising awareness about alcohol abuse aren’t mutually exclusive strategies. It’s not Coleman’s job to protect an antiquated law from changing social norms. It is her job to find the best way to protect students — this might be one way to do that.

Frankly, if the current minimum drinking age is debated on its merits, it will likely be seen for what it is: illogical and counterproductive. It drives dangerous drinking habits beneath the surface where they can't be addressed. It discourages underage drinkers from helping their dangerously intoxicated friends by threatening minor-in-possession charges. It assumes that 18-year-olds, who are responsible enough to vote and serve in the military, aren’t responsible enough to drink in moderation.

But we need to have that debate first. And that’s why Coleman should take the advice of the alcohol abuse guide she co-authored while president of the University of Iowa: “Be Vocal, Be Visible, Be Visionary.” Sign on.