BINGE DRINKING UP ON CAMPUS

SURVEY: Paradoxically, the number of abstainers has risen at the same time.

Despite a decade of aggressive prevention efforts, heavy drinking on
college campuses did not diminish in the 1990s, according to a study
released Tuesday by the Harvard School of Public Health.

But attitudes toward alcohol among students have become more polarized,
with increases in abstainers and frequent binge drinkers.

"It is disturbing that these findings show an increase in the most extreme
and high-risk form of drinking," said Henry Wechsler, director of the
College Alcohol Studies Program and the author of the study. "My
disappointment is, given all the action on college campuses to deal with
this problem, and given the attention that has been placed on it, the fact
that it has stayed so remarkably stable shows what a difficult problem it
is."

The survey of more than 14,000 students at 119 colleges in 39 states found
22.7 percent were "frequent binge drinkers," meaning they had consumed at
least five drinks in a row for men, or four for women, at least three times
in the two weeks before they had filled out the questionnaire.

That is up from 19.8 percent in 1993, the first year of Wechsler's study,
whose latest results appear in this month's issue of the Journal of
American College Health.

The percentage of occasional binge drinkers dropped from 24.7 in 1993 to
21.4 last year, the survey found, and the percentage of non-binge drinkers
- students who had consumed alcohol in the past year but had not recently
binged - fell from 40.1 to 36.6.

Abstainers - students who had not drunk at all in the past year - grew from
15.4 percent in 1993 to 19.2 percent in 1999.

More students were choosing to live in alcohol-free dormitories, the survey
found, and binge drinking dropped by almost 6 percent for students living
on campus, while it rose a similar amount for those living off campus.

"Even at Florida State, the No. 1 party school in the nation, the majority
of students do not binge drink," said Ed McGlothlin, 20, an abstainer and a
junior at FSU in Tallahassee. "But you're inundated by it. You have to go
out of your way to avoid that kind of culture."

More than three-fourths of the students surveyed said they had experienced
the secondhand effects of binge drinking, including being interrupted while
studying or awakened (58 percent), having to take care of a drunken student
(50 percent), or being insulted or humiliated (29 percent).

Wechsler examined the efforts that college administrators were making to
curtail binge drinking, finding that 97 percent of the 734 institutions
surveyed had alcohol education programs in place.

Forty percent of the schools were working with groups in their communities
to address underage drinking, and one in four reported regular meetings on
the issue with neighborhood groups.

Richard Yoast, director of a $10 million program financed by the Robert
Wood Johnson foundation to address binge drinking on 10 campuses across the
country, said the survey suggested that a serious commitment could have an
effect on the problem. "Every campus needs to address the whole environment
in which drinking occurs," Yoast said.