But lately, there have been signs that attitude is changing. Faculty senate
president Jahan Ramazani has proposed moving the fraternity rush from the
first semester of freshman year to sophomore year, so incoming 18-year-olds
have a chance to know more about college life before committing to a social
system so steeped in alcohol. He also believes that raiding the
fraternities once in a while might be useful.

"No one thinks of venturing into a frat house," he said. "There's this
mystical quality of not crossing that line. If cops went in a couple of
times and made arrests, it could change the pattern of behavior."

Indeed, less than a week after Ms. Baltz's death, state agents raided a
Virginia Commonwealth fraternity, arresting 52 students in a crackdown on
under-age drinking.

But ax-wielding policemen did not stop liquor from flowing during
Prohibition in the 1920s, and hauling all the frat brothers off to jail
isn't likely to, either. The two most recent alcohol fatalities at the
University of Virginia have involved seniors who were over 21, drinking at
off-campus apartments.

Changing the binge drinking culture, public health officials say, is a
long, slow process that requires a good deal of resources for education and
advertising at a time when the federal commitment is near zero.

In 1987, the Reagan administration provided $8 million in seed money to
start substance abuse institutes on 100 campuses. By the end of the Bush
administration, funding had climbed to $14 million, but this year, under
President Clinton, just $1.7 million in grants was awarded to seven
colleges.

Today, schools like Virginia, which have kept their programs going with
private funding, are the exception, says Anderson of George Mason. In a few
cases, foundations have provided grants, although they have not nearly made
up for the loss of government funds.

This year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave about $700,000 apiece
over a five-year period to Lehigh University and the universities of Iowa,
Vermont, Colorado, Wisconsin and Delaware, to develop coalitions with their
local communities, aimed at curbing high-risk drinking.

Finances are tight at the University of Virginia: the state has cut its
fiscal appropriation to the university by 30 percent in the last decade. So
there is little money available for campus officials trying to put together
a new publicity campaign aimed at teaching students to drink moderately.

"You need a budget for shiny posters, advertising, a video campaign," said
Susan Tate, who will oversee the Virginia effort. "If I had 1 percent of
the millions Budweiser has to advertise, I might be able to make a dent.
But with what we have -- we'll just have to see what we can do."

Researchers consider a person who has had five drinks on one occasion
during the previous two weeks to be a binge drinker. By that definition,
Ryan Dabbieri, a 22-year-old University of Virginia senior, was a binger,
although he did not think of himself that way. "I didn't drink a lot," said
Ryan, an electrical engineering major. "Maybe once a week, I'd do five,
maybe six or seven drinks in two hours. What I drank was pretty typical."

He was looking forward to the Nov. 29 Virginia Tech game, the season
finale. At a tailgating party that Saturday afternoon, Ryan drank bourbon
with several friends. "I was pouring and I was very excited about the game
and, apparently, I was pouring two or three times as big shots for myself
as everyone else," he recalled. "I didn't realize it. I remember maybe
three shots, I can't remember after that, but my friends said I actually
drank 5 or 6 big shots in 10, 15 minutes."

Police did not bother tailgaters, but as fans poured into the stadium,
there was security everywhere, looking for alcohol. " was pretty out of
it," Ryan said. "One of my friends said, 'You'll have to sober up to get
in.' I tightened up to get through, then once I was in, I sort of fell
apart."

He doesn't remember the rest, but has since pieced it together from friends
and doctors.

When he began throwing up in the stands, the two women he was with decided
they had better get him out of there. It was a lot of work lugging him back
to the car -- 6 feet, 1 inch and 165 pounds of dead weight. As they passed,
people made sly comments about "doing your fourth-year fifth." His friends
planned to drive him home and put him to bed, but one of them was a
lifeguard trained in first aid, and when Ryan didn't come to, they took him
to the hospital as a precaution. At the emergency room, they got a
wheelchair and rolled him in, and about then, he stopped breathing. When
doctors realized it, they raced to put him on a respirator. They estimated
his breathing had stopped for four minutes and did a brain scan to check
for damage.

His blood alcohol level was .25.

He came to the next morning in the intensive care unit, but was still so
drunk that he didn't realize why he was in the hospital. When he tried to
talk, the tube in his throat prevented him, and on a piece of paper he
wrote, "What happened?" That evening, he said: "I woke up and my Dad was
standing there. He'd come in from Atlanta. My parents are divorced, and I
don't see him often, so it was a big shock to me -- that's when I realized
I'd almost died."

He says the experience was hardest for his friends, who saved his life.
"They were by my side the whole time, scared to death I would die," he
said. "Being unconscious, I missed all the emotion of it.

"I don't see myself drinking again," he added. "I'm lucky not to be dead."

On Monday, Dec. 1, at 3 in the afternoon, less than 48 hours after he had
stopped breathing, Ryan Dabbieri walked out of the hospital, returning to
finish the semester and prepare for exams.

Leslie Baltz lived through that same Saturday night in the same intensive
care unit, but the next morning, when a brain scan showed no activity, her
parents made the decision to have life support withdrawn. She was
pronounced dead at 10:15 Sunday morning. The Baltzes donated her organs,
and later that week she was cremated.

Neither the Baltzes nor their daughter's friends have talked to the press,
and the Charlottesville police have released only basic information, saying
the family has suffered enough.

On campus, the biggest unanswered question is why friends left her alone in
that condition. The health service has since run a full-page ad in the The
Cavalier Daily with a list of things to do when students pass out drunk,
including making sure someone stays with the unconscious person.

Det. Richard Hudson handled the Baltz investigation, interviewing the
friends, including one of the girlfriends who found her. "As you talk to
them," he said, "you can see them begin to recognize their mortality. They
tell you, 'It's not possible, I just saw her.' "

During his 11 years as a detective, he has handled "six or eight" college
drinking deaths. "All these kids are nice, and their families are nice
people," he said. "You get the sobbing people, they want to know what
happened; it's awful, all these nice people sobbing.

"Tomorrow morning," Hudson said, "at the memorial service, there'll be all
these sobbing people. And by evening, a lot will be drinking again. Some of
them won't, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say more will be drinking
than not."

Friday, Dec. 5, was a brilliant sunny morning with a crisp blue sky and a
late fall chill in the air. By 10:30, the main gallery at the university's
Bayley Art Museum was filled to overflowing with about 200 people, mostly
students: young women in tasteful, dark wool outfits and young men in
conservative suits, there for Leslie Baltz's memorial service.

In an hour's time, two dozen people spoke, ranging from the head of the art
department to a friend who had spent nine summers with Leslie at overnight
camp. Leslie was a double major in studio art and art history, and one of
her paintings was placed on an easel, by the podium.

Her professors recalled an excellent student, with a 3.92 average out of
4.0 in art and a 3.67 overall. They mentioned the semester she spent
abroad, in Florence, and the senior essay she was preparing on Polish-born
sculptor Elie Nadelman. "I can say it really was promising work," said
Prof. Matthew Affron.

Christy Ullrich, a friend, described visiting Leslie in Rome, and recalled
how, late at night, when they needed to get home and did not have a transit
pass, Leslie decided they would just jump on a bus. "She said, 'Oh forget
it, let's just hop on. If any men in red suits get on, just jump out the
back door."

Friends mentioned her piercing green eyes, and how beautiful she could look
at a party, dancing in a dress with no shoes.

Michelle Mandolia, a roommate, said that when she and Leslie couldn't get
all their studying done at night, they would set their alarms for early
morning, put on coffee and work in the predawn darkness. She said when she
thinks of Leslie, she sees her studying in a heavy sweater, curled up on
the couch with wool socks. She recalled how Leslie liked eating chocolate
chips by the handful straight out of the bag and picking marshmallows out
of her Lucky Charms. She described how Leslie would come home at night from
her part-time job at the university's music library, announce she would be
up for several more hours, studying, then immediately fall asleep in her
clothes. And she remembered the time Leslie baked a tuna casserole in the
oven with the Saran Wrap still on the top.

Hudson was right: the memorial service was full of all these nice people
sobbing. And he was right again: that night, the fraternities along Rugby
Road and the bars on The Corner were crammed to capacity with glassy-eyed
students drinking all kinds of concoctions from paper cups.

Turner, of student health services, called it "a pretty typical weekend --
three or four alcohol cases in the emergency room."