To the Community:

"There are very few minors at this school," I said at dinner last night, thinking it was an obvious and unenlightening statement.

"Oh?" said a friend, obviously confused.

I reminded her that 18 was the age of legal majority. She clearly thought it was 21.

"You didn't know you were a legal adult?"

"I guess I forgot."

How can people be legally responsible for their actions as adult citizens and not even know it!? In Philadelphia, orphans -- wards of the state -- can't go to college, because all funding is cut off when they become adults. For three years, 18-21, these people are forced to suffer all the pains of legal independence, without being aloud to drink a beer, relax at a club or bar, or win tickets from WRTI to a jazz show.

With legal majority, we gain all responsibilities, but only some of the advantages. When I turned 18 three years ago, I received the right to gamble my money away in Atlantic City, but still wasn't allowed into any of the casinos because they served free drinks at the card tables. What's beautiful about Atlantic City is that it manages to manifest almost all the contradictions of our confused legal system on one small stretch of beach.

What does it say about our society that the older citizens try to prolong the childhood of the younger citizens? What does it say that America's youth cooperates passively, unknowingly?

Half of the staff and administration of this college, doesn't realize that outside of the context of alcohol, the law considers all of the students (with the small and temporary exception of a few young freshman) to be the legal equals of the professors, administration and staff.

When my roommate and I took an HPA apartment the summer after our freshman year, his boss told him she couldn't believe his mother was letting him do it: "Of course if she wanted to, she could have always just put her foot down," she told me later, "and there's nothing he could have done about it."

Wrong! No matter what the schizophrenic criminal laws say about drinking, we are all legally independent of our parents. Few of us are financially independent of them (some of us actually are), but many are on financial aid and pay for as much of their education if not more than their parents do.

I grew up reading legal documents about my divorced parents' duties to me "until 18 years of age," and being told that I was legally under their authority as a minor. It is ironic that after I am no longer a minor, and no longer have any legal right to make financial claims against my family, that after I have long been subject to all adult responsibilities under the eyes of the law, I am still subject to the prejudices and ignorance of people who consider me a child, as well as a legal system which deemed me irresponsible to drink until only a few short months ago.