BE SAFE, MY SON

Like a slalom skier, you've navigated around Nintendo, skateboards,
cigarettes, broken hearts, gangs, coed sleepovers, SATs, general
irritability and all-around stupidity that so often goes hand-in-hand
with kids and adolescence.

Now, with a child out of the nest and in college, you've triumphantly
crossed the finish line. Time to kick back and heave a sigh of relief,
right?

Wrong. The only heaving, it seems, is being done by the students
themselves.

You don't need to look much further than a rash of alcohol-related
deaths over the past two years to know that drinking at colleges is
out of control. It's debatable whether that can be blamed on afternoon
tailgate parties, nickel-pitcher nights, a revival of the Greek
system, head-in-the-sand administrators or a climate that winks at
drunkenness. What is fact, according to a Harvard University study, is
that 43 percent of college students admitted to binge drinking in the
preceding two weeks. The study defined binge drinking as five drinks
or more at one sitting for a man, four for a woman.

This obsession with booze reaches its annual apex in March, when
thousands of college students head for places like Panama City, Fla.,
Ft. Lauderdale or South Padre Island in Texas. But recreational
vomiting is hardly limited to spring break--or even weekends, for that
matter. Rather, it has become a vexing public health problem that has
parents, educators and prosecutors scrambling for solutions.

"1997 was a real wake-up call for us," said David Botkins, spokesman
for Mark Earley, attorney general of Virginia, which claimed five of
that year's 30 drinking-related fatalities. Earley responded by
convening a task force, which came out with 65 recommendations, such
as arranging for parents of deceased students to give a firsthand
account to incoming freshmen on the dangers of drinking.

"There is no silver bullet to dismantle the culture of binge drinking
on college campuses," Botkins said, "but there are substantive
measures that universities can put in place to reduce the problem."

Virginia is hardly alone in trying to combat binge drinking.
Dartmouth--whose raucous frat life was the inspiration for the 1978
movie "National Lampoon's Animal House"--announced last month that it
was bucking tradition and getting rid of single-sex fraternities.
While Dartmouth's Greeks staged a protest faster than you can say
"Toga!" the administration is sticking to its guns. By watering down
some of that testosterone, they hope to dilute drinking as well.

At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and
University of Michigan--three schools where students died in recent
years--administrators have shut down some fraternities altogether.
Other schools--Southern Illinois University among them--have opted for
a total alcohol ban. "To tell you the truth, we're all grasping at
straws," admitted a dean at a small Midwestern college. "We all know
we have to do something . . . we're just not sure what."

While I was vaguely aware of the debate, the topic didn't really hit
home until December, just a day before winter vacation, when a student
from Vernon Hills died of alcohol poisoning at Indiana University
where I, too, have a son.

I ached on behalf of the young man's parents and wondered if the phone
call had come in the middle of the night, like a bad dream? Had they
already placed some of his Christmas presents under the tree? I bet,
like me, they spent years checking homework, investing in braces and
badgering their son about more sleep and less junk food. And I
shuddered at the tremendous loss of potential.

Of course, I talked with my son about the tragedy over Christmas
vacation. But the most telling moment came as my son prepared to
return to campus. I hugged him a little tighter, a little longer,
despite the fact that his ride was honking impatiently in the
driveway. "Be safe," I told him. But my advisories were waved away
like an annoying mosquito. He is, after all, 18, and invincible.

"Relax," said one of my colleagues, who spent most of the early 1970s
in a drug-induced fog. "Everyone does it. Getting wasted is a rite of
passage into adulthood."

But I can't help thinking it's different now. Marijuana might inflict
major damage over decades, but it does not have the impact of downing
21 shots of tequila in an hour, the "game" that killed a Louisiana
State University sophomore. It isn't drinking--but being drunk--that
is seen as the primary way of socializing, experts say.

In addition, students are more brazen about being intoxicated than a
generation ago. Today, kegs sit on porches and front lawns, vomiting
stations are de rigueur at parties and age restrictions are dismissed
as a joke. (Of course, you don't have to leave home to find such
chutzpah. Almost two-thirds, or 6.9 million, of junior high and high
school students who drink also purchase their own alcohol, according
to the American Medical Association.)

"It's not what you and I did," said David Anderson, 49, assistant
professor at George Mason University, who has studied alcohol trends
for the past 20 years. "Today's students went into a heavier drinking
culture than we ever did."

The confusion is not just in the rarefied circles of academia, but in
my own neighborhood as well. Like the childhood game of
step-on-a-crack-and-you-break-your-mother's-back, other parents
constructed their own theories to keep anxiety at bay:

- - One mother of a high school senior has researched college drinking
the way a handicapper studies the racing form. She believes it's all
about money. She turned down an attractive offer for her teenager from
the University of Illinois, while holding out for a fat envelope from
an elite Eastern school (translation: $30,000 a year) because at an
academic powerhouse, "kids are too busy hitting the books to hit the
bottle," she said. Soothing words until I realized that there had been
fatalities at highly competitive schools such as Tulane and Boston
University.

- - Another parent reached a totally different conclusion. "Two words,"
he said conspiratorially. "Community college." More modest
institutions usually attract students who are paying their own
tuition, working or both. "Less disposable income means less time to
get plastered," he said.

- - "Kids are going to drink, no matter what," said our pediatrician.
"But the good news is that most students, especially freshmen, don't
have access to a car," he said, in his best Marcus Welby-esque manner.
I almost bought it, too, until I discovered that only very few of the
1997 alcohol-related fatalities came behind the wheel. The majority
were a result of falling down stairs, out windows and just passing out
and never waking up.

- - I was safe, said another parent, who knew that chocolate brownies,
not bourbon, are my drug of choice. "If your kid didn't grow up around
booze, you don't have a thing to worry about." My peace of mind lasted
just long enough to hear a radio psychologist opine that it's the kids
who aren't exposed to alcohol at home, who go overboard as soon as
they get out on their own. Who knew that the bottle of wedding
champagne (second only to the Tabasco sauce for refrigerator
seniority) could have been put to better use as a teaching device?

In the end, there's not much I am certain of, except: Parenthood is
one long held breath. There is no finish line in parenting. And
control is an illusion.