Higher Education: Crocked on Campus

By Christine Gorman

Neal, a 21-year-old college student, knows he had a good time last September when he attended a costume party in suburban Los Angeles. He just can't remember it. After downing a dozen hits of vodka and cranberry juice, the University of Southern California senior staggered outside and passed out on a , nearby lawn. At 3 a.m., two strangers drove him back to campus. He fell over a bike rack, passed out again, then woke up to find one of L.A.'s finest snapping handcuffs on him. The police did not press charges, and the officer handed Neal over to a campus security guard, who had to drive him home at 5 a.m. Today, the young man has no remorse over anything about the evening -- except the '70s-style disco clothes he was wearing. "I was dressed like a complete moron," Neal recalls. "I wasn't really embarrassed about the rest."

Remorseless drinking has long been as much a ritual of university life as football, final exams and frat parties. Almost every college graduate can spin at least a few tales about a boisterous night of carousing that culminated in slugging shots of tequila at sunrise or tossing drained kegs into the president's pool. Even Thomas Jefferson had to contend with a group of drunken rowdies who caused a near riot at the school that he founded, the University of Virginia. Ever since then, periodic efforts to crack down on excessive alcohol consumption among young scholars have been largely futile. Enforcing strict rules on university turf seemed to push the parties off campus. Raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 in the 1980s merely triggered a boom in the business of creating fake ID cards.

Now there may be a new force for change. Students who are tired of paying $20,000 a year to have someone throw up on their shoes have launched a growing backlash against their inebriated peers. Not just freshmen, prodded by overanxious parents, but upperclassmen as well are demanding alcohol- and drug-free living and study environments. Even at party-hearty Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the students in an entire dorm have pledged to stay sober during their four years of school. Repentant drinkers, meanwhile, are helping organize Alcoholics Anonymous groups on campus.

Still small and somewhat timid, the campus temperance movement has taken its cue from antismoking campaigns. Restrictions on public smoking gained momentum after nonsmokers learned about the dangers of secondhand smoke. Once those in the smokeless majority realized that their own health and quality of life were directly affected, they stood up and demanded their right to a tobacco-free airspace. In the same way, more and more students who drink little or no alcohol have focused on the fact that other people's drunkenness isn't just unpleasant. It often leads to physical and sexual assaults and even death, especially when wasted students climb behind the wheel of a car. Enough is enough, say the campus rebels who want to stay sober.

The movement got a major boost last week from a study published by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. Appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the report contains the first scientifically reliable national survey that documents not only the astonishing prevalence of undergraduate drinking but also the effect that drinkers have on other students. Based on the responses of 17,592 students at 140 campuses, the researchers declared that nearly half of collegians are binge drinkers who cause all sorts of trouble, from vandalism to attacks on classmates. At the schools where drinking was most popular, more than two- thirds of students had had their sleep or study interrupted by drunken peers. More than half had been forced to care for an inebriated friend, and at least a fourth had suffered an unwanted sexual advance. Alcohol plays a role in 90% of rapes and almost all violent crime on campus.

It is not clear from the study whether students are drinking more than in the past. In fact, some schools claim to be seeing slight declines in overall alcohol consumption. But the findings suggest that among the many students who like to binge, there is a more relentless, desperate quality to the pursuit of intoxication. The drinkers also seem more blase than ever about the consequences. "Look, this is nothing," 20-year-old Cecily, a junior at the University of New Hampshire, tells a reporter as she downs her fourth beer at a midweek party. "We did the same thing last night and turned out for exams. We can handle it."

A particularly pernicious sign of the times is a phenomenon called frontloading, in which students drink alcohol, usually hard liquor, in private before attending a social event. "It's difficult to get alcohol when you're out because of the age law," explains Seph McKenna, a junior who lives in a substance-free dorm at Boston College. "So people say, 'I'd better be lubricated before I go out."' When writer Christopher Buckley gave the keynote address at the annual evening banquet of the Yale Daily News last month, he was so outraged by the boorish behavior of audience members, many of whom had been drinking since the afternoon, that he castigated them in a New York Times Op Ed piece.

To those who are fed up with binge drinking, the experts offer this advice: don't get even, get mad. "They must speak up for their rights," says Henry Wechsler, a public health expert who led the Harvard study. "If your roommate gets drunk every night, you demand either a new roommate or that you be moved." Wechsler is quick to point out that he doesn't want to get rid of drinking, just drunkenness. With up to 85% of college students imbibing at least some of the time, total prohibition is not practical, he says, but colleges can insist on moderation and have no tolerance for booze-induced violence.

Restraint can be a tough sell, though, especially among young people who have just escaped their parents' watchful eyes and are eager to become free spirits. "There may be more of us who say something about the drinking now," says Danielle Moore, a 22-year-old senior at Dartmouth who left her sorority in the summer of her sophomore year to join 54 other students in the school's alcohol- and drug-free dorm. "But you still feel the pressures and the isolation if you choose to go through your college years without drinking. There is a perception that we're uptight or antisocial."

Yet some students are pleasantly surprised by the liquor-free zones. Sheila Meneves, 18, is no teetotaler. But dormitory space at the University of California at Berkeley is so limited that students take what they can get. So when Meneves moved into Freeborn, a no-alcohol-allowed residence for 228 students, she expected to be bored beyond endurance. Instead, she's become a convert to the concept. "I have time to study here because there's no noise and there's no one throwing up in the hallway at all hours of the night," she says. "It's just like any other dorm with the exception that it's cleaner and quieter." Sounds like something that could catch on.

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Themselves and Others

With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston, Rod Paul/Hanover and Tara Weingarten/Los Angeles