Has college drinking changed qualitatively, too?

Today, drunkenness is more of a goal. What I define as "frequent extreme drinkers" are up. Those who were drunk more than three times in the past month went up 25.6 percent between 1993 and 2001, and those who "drink to get drunk" are up by 21 percent in the same period.

Moreover, the weekend has extended. At many schools, the partying goes Thursday to Sunday, even Wednesday to Sunday at some schools. Bars sponsor "All You Can Drink for $5" evenings, where students buy a cup and get refills at will.

The cheap, large supply of alcohol expands the amount consumed.

Do you know why they are compelled to drink so much?

Why they're drinking, God alone knows. They're in a wet environment where college traditions, peer pressures and cheap alcohol combine to motivate them to drink. When you ask them why they drink, they respond: "To get drunk."

Are campus bans on alcohol effective?

Campus bans on alcohol curtail the culture of drunkenness by reducing binge drinking by 30 percent, reducing the rates of drinking overall and reducing secondhand dangers from drinking. Schools that ban alcohol have safer environments.

However, we also found that those who drink do just as much extreme drinking and have the same problems that those at nonban schools have. We haven't found a solution to keeping people who drink from becoming heavy drinkers. There is a core group of college drinkers whose indulgence will be extreme, with or without the school ban.

So the classic "Animal House" stereotype of the football player/frat boy is alive and well?

Unfortunately for them, yes. And they've been joined by college women, 20 percent of whom are frequent binge drinkers. It is paradoxical that athletes, especially male athletes, despite incentives during playing season not to binge drink, do so more.

You say that women's addition to the drinking culture has brought percentages up overall. Are there consequences particular to women?

Of the 2,300,000 women in American colleges, 20 percent are frequent binge drinkers, and 8.9 percent of those women report having experienced nonconsensual sex because they were too impaired to give consent. That's 42,000 women who don't get to say no.

What about the rest of the college population, including the nonbingers?

Dr. [Ralph] Hingson [the NIAAA study's chief researcher] has found that overall, 100,000 college students report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex.

The "sherries" at my professors' homes seemed like good object lessons in drinking responsibly when I was a student. Now a thing of the past. Do you think they're a loss?

We had "sherries" in my day, too, and I think it's a shame that drinking on campus has to be either "heavy or none." But if I have to choose, I'll choose the safer option. Campuses are so filled with alcohol, administrators can't add to that.

What other measures can colleges undertake to control drinking?

Students who lived in substance-free housing experience less drug use due to self-selection for that housing, a decrease in peer pressure and a decrease in availability. The same holds true for alcohol-free housing -- residents were three-fifths less likely to do heavy episodic drinking, though again, those who drank did so heavily. They find a way.

The protective effect of alcohol-free housing is greatest for those who didn't binge in high school. In fact, overall, I've seen a correlation between high school binge drinkers (30 percent) and those who binge drink in college (44 percent).

You've conducted studies on student self-assessment of their drinking. What did you find?

The more people drink, the higher they set the bar. Frequent binge drinkers defined a problem at 10 drinks in a row. Nondrinkers said that five in a row was a problem. I use the five/four measure [five drinks for men, four for women] because that's the point at which drinkers encounter educational problems, antisocial behavior, injury, vandalism, police involvement, overdose, high-risk sexual behavior and other high-risk activity such as drunk driving, which as the NIAAA and Dr. Hingson's report states, is done by 2.1 million college students a year. That's a big problem, for everybody.

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