Yet again, legislators are targeting college students under the age of 21 who drink alcohol as the subjects of a new piece of Pennsylvania legislation that outlines penalties for underage drinkers.

If passed this summer, the Higher Education Alcohol Policy Act, sponsored by Sen. John Rafferty, R-Norristown, would dictate how universities handle cases of underage drinking.

In other words, the power to penalize students would be taken from universities like Penn State and given to the state of Pennsylvania. The bells in Old Main should be sounding with alarm.

This act states that students who commit an alcohol-related offense would be given three chances before being permanently expelled from the university they attend.

On the first offense, students would be required to attend an educational counseling course. A one-year expulsion follows the second offense and permanent expulsion follows a third. Good intentions are commendable, but good ideas are better.

If legislators truly want to fix a legitimate problem, they should be looking beyond underage drinking. Why not spend some time researching a problem that could help, not hurt, Pennsylvania's college students.

Out-of-control tuition, anyone?

Take a lesson from European countries that have legislated 18 years old as the legal drinking age. Statistics show significant differences between alcohol-related offenses in those countries as compared to the United States, which has legislators who insist on outlawing something as common as drinking alcohol.

Bottom line: Underage drinking is not going to stop.

No amount of license suspensions, education courses or threats of expulsion is going to deter under-21ers from having a few beers on the weekend -- or during the week, for that matter.

Even State College's own Mayor Bill Welch, who has witnessed the culture of underage drinking first-hand, has said that the idea of legislators handling liquor law enforcement is one he is hesitant about.

Pennsylvania's legislature absolutely must recognize the need for flexibility when it comes to students who commit minor infractions. College students pay an outrageous amount of money to receive a higher education, and it is counter-productive to deny someone an education for making such small mistakes a few times. It is simply not the role of a legislative branch to decide how a university should penalize students who commit minor alcohol-related offenses.

Let this bill die and move on to lowering tuition.