According to the most recent College Alcohol Study from the Harvard School of Public Health, 44 percent of college students surveyed in 2001 were classified as binge drinkers. That percentage has remained steady over the last eight years, despite social trends that could have reduced it. "The drinking style on campus is still one of excess," said Henry Wechsler, principal investigator of the study. "If you are a traditional college student and you drink, the odds are seven in 10 that you are a binge drinker." (Traditional college students are those aged 18 to 23 who do not live with their parents.)

The 2001 College Alcohol Study includes responses from over 10,000 full-time students at 119 four-year colleges in 38 states and the District of Columbia. The same schools were surveyed in companion studies conducted in 1993, 1997, and 1999. The Harvard researchers defined binge drinkers as: Men who had five or more drinks in a row at least once in the two weeks before the survey; or women who had four or more drinks in a row at least once in the same two-week period.

An April 2002 report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism -- "A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at U.S. Colleges" -- reinforces the Harvard survey. It found that 1,400 college students are killed each year in alcohol-related accidents and that alcohol contributes to 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assault each year. This report describes a detailed set of "beliefs and customs" that are "entrenched in every level of college students' environments." In short, a significant number of college students still see drinking as a necessary rite of passage and requirement for social success.

A complex set of clashing forces affects the culture of campus drinking. On the one hand there are trends discovered by the Harvard researchers that theoretically should have decreased binge drinking:

• Falling numbers of students who report binge drinking in high school.
• Rising numbers of students who live in alcohol-free campus housing.
• Decreased membership in fraternities and sororities, sources that frequently support the drinking culture.
• Increases in the number of students exposed to educational materials about binge drinking.

Yet these trends are undermined by forces that promote drinking, such as dense pockets of bars and liquor stores near college campuses; lowered alcohol prices, including "happy hours" and other price promotions; and alcohol advertising that targets college students.

The remaining challenge for colleges is two-fold. One is to rigorously enforce existing laws against underage drinking. In their newly published review of research on college drinking, Traci L. Toomey and Alexander Wagenaar from the University of Minnesota note that such laws are inconsistently enforced across the United States. In fact, underage drinkers succeed in nearly half of their attempts too buy alcohol.

The second challenge is to base prevention efforts on solid research. According to the NIAAA report, strategies with the greatest support from current studies include:

• Brief, personal interventions in student health centers and emergency rooms that motivate students to reduce drinking.
• Educational programs that modify student beliefs about the positive social effects of alcohol.
• Increased enforcement of minimum drinking age laws and drunk driving laws.
• Reducing the number of bars and liquor stores located in campus neighborhoods.
• Increased liquor prices and excise taxes on alcoholic beverages.
• Forming coalitions between colleges and their surrounding communities to prevent underage drinking.

"From every standpoint, there's more work to do," Wechsler notes. "Binge drinking is so long-standing, deeply entrenched and pervasive, that it will take more than slogans and simple cure-alls to impact it and reduce the damage that it produces."

Wechsler, the NIAAA, and other sources agree that work must be done to change young people's attitudes about drinking. The culture of acceptance must change, they say. Colleges and communities need to reinforce beliefs that it's not only okay not to drink excessively, it's the norm, because the majority of college students (56 percent) do not binge drink. And, in fact, 20 percent of students don't drink at all.

Visit the NIAAA's Web site http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/ for more information.