Though the number of protesters was smaller than expected, about 20 Kansas University students marched through campus Saturday to challenge the state’s legal drinking age.

The march organizer, Jared Loehr, said he wasn’t disappointed.

“I would have been pleased if it was just me and a sign,” the 19-year-old sophomore from Overland Park said.

Loehr and his fellow marchers spent the week preparing signs with slogans such as “Let Adults Drink as Adults,” “I Need Beer,” and “If I Can Fight for My Land, Why Can’t I Have A Drink In My Hand.”

The legal age for drinking alcoholic beverages in Kansas is 21. Loehr and his supporters want to see the age rolled back to 18.

Loehr had been thinking about ways to protest the drinking age as long as a year ago but didn’t do anything about it until last spring while living in KU’s Oliver Hall. He and Wichita sophomore Krystal Werth formed the Political Activist Club and began recruiting students for their cause. They used e-mail and word of mouth.

Although Loehr said earlier up to 300 people had expressed an interest in the drinking age campaign, most apparently were more interested in getting ready to watch the KU-Kansas State football game.

Loehr and his small band of marchers gathered in front of the KU Student Recreation Fitness Center and then paraded through campus and down Campanile hill to Memorial Stadium to attract the attention of football fans arriving for the game.

“We can still get our point across,” said Kristen Robben, a sophomore from Victoria, who joined the march.

Kansas University students rally and march across campus to bring awareness to their efforts, begun last spring, to lower the Kansas drinking age to 18.

Nick Morrissey, Overland Park sophomore, said he thought the movement would grow in the future.

“I am so for it,” he said. “Once people hear about this, they are going to come out for it.”

Loehr, however, said he wasn’t planning any more marches. He wants to organize a movement to lobby the Kansas Legislature when it convenes in January.