NYRA’s newest chapter has been approved at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the new chapter’s founder, Lindsay Coley, is eager to
get started. The chapter has ambitious goals, planning to hold a
debate on the drinking age on campus during the spring semester. Last
month, NYRA Executive Director Alex Koroknay-Palicz made our case very
successfully in a similar debate at Manhattanville College, but this
would be the first public debate on the issue, along with the planned
debate in New York City, hosted by a NYRA chapter. NYRA-UTSA also
plans to campaign for the University of Texas system to endorse the
Amethyst Initiative, the effective push by NYRA ally Choose
Responsibility to open public debate about the legal drinking age, and
the chapter hopes to win a lower drinking age within five years.
In addition to the drinking age, the new chapter also plans to work
for student rights, both in colleges and for younger students, and to
strongly oppose discriminatory youth curfews. Coley and her chapter
recognize that, even though they as college students are no longer
directly affected by unjust laws that target only legal minors, “the
last thing we should do is ignore those problems as we once faced
them, it would be wrong to ignore them.”
NYRA-UTSA will have help on campus as they work for youth rights. A
co-founder of the chapter is starting a chapter of another
organization that partners with NYRA, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and they plan to work with the campus ACLU chapter as well.
