Turning 21 is treated as a rite of passage by most Americans.

Friends are called to hit a bar, or several, and proceed to get the celebrant smashed.

But a growing collection of high-powered academics is challenging the norm – suggesting there is nothing magic about the age 21.

To date, 129 college presidents have signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, which seeks to reopen debate on the current legal drinking age.

While the list now leans to Eastern schools, with the presidents of Duke University, the University of Maryland, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and Ohio State University, a handful of California college presidents also have signed on.

Closer to home, though, the reaction has been mixed: President Alexander Gonzalez of California State University, Sacramento, rejected the initiative. University of California, Davis, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef is neutral.

"Sacramento State is not taking part in the Amethyst Initiative and does not support lowering the minimum drinking age to 18," Gonzalez said in an e-mailed statement. "Alcohol consumption is the leading cause of highway fatalities involving teenagers, and keeping the minimum drinking age at 21 will help ensure that more young people are not added to that national tragedy."

Meanwhile, Vanderhoef has asked that the issue be considered among all 10 of the University of California chancellors at an upcoming meeting.

Vanderhoef is still gathering information before taking a personal position, a spokesperson said.

Backers of the initiative said administrators at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University are also "considering" signing on.

Further north, Paul Zingg, president of California State University, Chico, said he has no interest in lowering the legal drinking age.

"What bothers me about the Amethyst Initiative, is it almost strikes me as throwing up our hand and saying, 'We can't do anything about underage drinking,' " Zingg said.

"If you push (the legal drinking age) down to 18, you push it into the high schools," he added.

Zingg's administration has worked hard to change the reputation and psyche of the campus Playboy once said was the nation's top party school.

He said he's "not trying to take the fun out of college by any means, but trying to make it more responsible."

Behind the Amethyst Initiative is the three-person nonprofit Choose Responsibility. The Vermont-based group insists that the 21-year-old drinking limit encourages overconsumption, often at off-campus private residences.

The group had planned to keep collecting signatures before going public in a few months, but once the news leaked, a media onslaught began.

Grace Kronenberg, a Choose Responsibility staffer, said that, overall, the publicity has been good.

But it hasn't all been good. Mothers Against Drunk Driving harshly attacked the initiative and its supporting universities.

Closer to home, Staci Anderson, executive director of People Reaching Out, a Sacramento-area group opposed to substance abuse, said lowering the drinking age would only make the problem worse.

"Are people drinking to get drunk? Yes – but why should we be encouraging it?" Anderson said.

James Gallerani, a 20-year-old Davis student, said on a moral level he agreed that people old enough to vote should be able to buy a beer legally, but he didn't think lowering the drinking age would end binge drinking.

"No matter what you do to the legal drinking age, the situation is going to stay the same. At 18, people are leaving the house and moving to a new world," Gallerani said.

Gallerani, a human development major, said he saw plenty of binge drinkers before he withdrew from a Davis fraternity. He said drinking to get drunk isn't limited to campus.

Amy Hogun, a 20-year-old American River College student, has a different view. As a high school student, she said, she had friends who wanted to drink to excess. But she also knew some Austrian exchange students who were "over it," uninterested in getting drunk. In Austria, Hogun explained, 16 is the legal drinking age.

"It would be good to lower it," she said. "I think the binge drinking would go down."

Call The Bee's Ed Fletcher, (916) 321-1269.