COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE STILL DRINKING TO GET DRUNK.

Despite efforts to curb drinking on campus, the percentage of students
indulging in alcohol binges has stayed roughly the same through the 1990s,
and the percentage of frequent bingers has increased, researchers said
yesterday. But the percentage of teetotalers has also increased somewhat,
according to the survey released yesterday by the Harvard School of Public
Health. Those who binge the most tend to be white, live in a fraternity or
sorority house, and have a history of drinking in high school, according to
the study led by Henry Wechsler, a social psychologist who followed up his
1993 and 1997 drinking studies.

Boston-area colleges and universities increased attention and efforts to
curb college campus drinking after well-publicized events such as the death
of MIT freshman Scott Krueger in 1997. Last November, an MIT fraternity was
disbanded after six Wellesley College freshman were served alcohol at one
of the fraternity's brownstones. Last week, the Boston Licensing Board
unanimously voted to suspend the Paradise rock club's license for six
months, for violations including serving alcohol to minors. But Wechsler
said efforts to decrease college drinking haven't worked yet. ''It may be
too early. I may be expecting too much,'' he said. In the study, Wechsler
defined a binge drinker as a man who drank at least five drinks in a row,
or a woman who drank four, at least once in the two weeks before the survey.

A frequent binge drinker had binged three or more times in the past two
weeks.

The 1999 study found the population of binge drinkers had stayed the same
since 1997, at 44 percent, and frequent binge drinkers rose last year to
22.7 percent of the student population, up from 19.8 percent in 1993 and
20.9 percent in 1997. Wechsler's study found that 78.9 percent of students
living in fraternity or sorority housing were binge drinkers. About 14,000
students at 119 four-year colleges nationwide filled out the surveys mailed
to them by Wechsler and his colleagues. The project was sponsored by the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the survey's margin of error is plus or
minus 1 percent.

''To make the situation harder for college administrators, most of these
students do not feel they have a problem, and the large majority consider
themselves moderate drinkers,'' said Wechsler. But he pointed out that the
majority of college students are not binge drinkers and one-third are
living in alcohol-free residence halls.

Some have questioned whether Wechsler's definition, which does not take
into account body weight or time, has perpetrated a notion that college
students are drinking more than they really are.

William DeJong, director of the Newton-based Higher Education Center for
Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, said clinicians define binge drinking to
be an ''out-of-control'' drinking habit, and said that students could
reasonably consume five drinks over a night with food and not be drunk.
''Students have hooted at the notion that five drinks is considered a
binge,'' DeJong said.

Judy Phalen, program director for alcohol and other drug education at
Northeastern University, one of the universities in Wechsler's study, said
that one of the newest ways to target students is social marketing and
telling students about the huge gap in perception and reality of college
drinking. Phalen said that although alcohol abuse is the number one problem
on college campuses, the notion that everybody is drinking heavily is
false. ''Normal use on [the Northeastern] campus is moderation or
non-use,'' said Phalen. In a 1998 survey, Phalen said that 72 percent of NU
students drank five or fewer drinks on an average week, and 25 percent
didn't drink. Although colleges are talking about incorporating more
alcohol education, MIT junior Todd Esguerra said that students won't
listen. ''When you are told not to drink, that makes you want to do it
more,'' he said. But the percentage of students who don't drink has been
rising steadily, from 15.4 percent in 1993 to 18.9 percent in 1997 and
finally, 19.2 percent in 1999, the study found.

Ken Campbell, spokesman for MIT, said that two years ago, the budget for
student events was tripled to $300,000 a year to plan more alcohol-free
events. The study found students who take part in ''industrial strength
alcohol consumption'' have increased risks of missing class, getting in
trouble, damaging property or getting hurt. It also found that such
drinkers have ''secondhand effects'' on their peers.

Students at high-binge campuses were twice as likely to report being
assaulted, awakened, or kept from studying by drinking students than were
non-binge drinkers at campuses where it was less common.