BATTLE OF THE BINGE

By ADAM COHEN

Benjamin Wynne, 20, underwent two of the most time-honored rites of passage at Louisiana State University last week. He received a pledge pin from the fraternity that voted him into the brotherhood, and he got rip-roaring drunk to celebrate. Wynne and his fellow Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers began their bacchanalia with an off-campus keg party featuring "funneling," in which beer is shot through a rubber hose into the drinker's mouth. Next came a communal bender at Murphy's bar, a frat hangout a few hundred yards from L.S.U. There, the libation of choice was "Three Wise Men," a high-octane mix of 151-proof rum, Crown Royal whiskey and Jagermeister liqueur. Wynne "was staggering, but no more than a lot of other people," says a college woman who was there. The festivities ended with upperclassmen wheeling the pledges out of the bar in shopping carts, because they were too far gone to walk. "They were like firemen carrying people out of a burning building," says Christopher Sule, an L.S.U. student who works at a sandwich shop next door. When police were called to the frat house hours later, they found almost two dozen men passed out on the living-room floor. By early morning, Wynne was dead of alcohol poisoning, and three of his fraternity brothers had been hospitalized. An autopsy found that Wynne, who downed the equivalent of about 24 drinks, had a blood-alcohol level six times the amount at which the state considers a person intoxicated.

Wynne's death last week sent a tremor down L.S.U.'s fraternity row and set off a round of back-to-school soul searching about binge drinking on campuses all over the U.S. Just days before the incident, The Princeton Review had ranked L.S.U. as No. 10 in the nation on a list of "top party schools." L.S.U. officials protest that their school is no worse than many others, which underscores the larger issue. A Harvard survey of 18,000 undergraduates found that 44% said they had engaged in binge drinking--four to five drinks in a row--in the previous two weeks. "Most schools realize they are just one tragedy away from being in the spotlight themselves," says Debra Erenberg, an alcohol-policy associate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. To combat excessive drinking, colleges in recent years have taken such steps as establishing alcohol-free dorms and writing letters to parents of hard-drinking students. But critics contend the L.S.U. tragedy shows the schools are still not doing enough. The incident also illustrates that although the drinking age is now 21 everywhere in America, making most college students underage, alcohol remains widely available--and highly promoted--to students of all ages.

Colleges today are among the nation's most alcohol-drenched institutions. America's 12 million undergraduates drink 4 billion cans of beer a year, averaging 55 six-packs apiece, and spend $446 on alcoholic beverages--more than they spend on soft drinks and textbooks combined. Excessive drinking among college students has been blamed for at least six deaths in the past year. Studies show that excessive drinking affects not only the bingers but also fellow students, who are more likely to report lost sleep, interrupted studies and sexual assaults on campuses with high binge-drinking rates. Several schools, including the University of Colorado, the University of Iowa and Ohio State, have recently been the site of "beer riots," some set off by toughened alcohol policies. At Colorado, scores of police and students were injured when a mob of 1,500 threw bricks and Molotov cocktails over a three-day period last May to protest a crackdown on drinking.

From the moment freshmen set foot on campus, they are steeped in a culture that encourages them to drink, and drink heavily. At many schools, social life is still synonymous with alcohol-lubricated gatherings at fraternities and sororities, as well as the tailgate-party and hip-flask scene that accompanies athletic events. But increasingly the pressure to drink is coming from bars catering to students, which aggressively promote themselves on school grounds. College newspapers, which get 35% of their advertising revenues from alcohol-related ads, are filled with come-ons for nickel pitchers of beer and "ladies drink free" specials. Bars distribute handbills to students as they walk between classes and put flyers under doors in freshman dorms. On many campuses, bars send shuttle buses to round up students. "There really are establishments that prey on youth," says Frances Lucas-Tauchar, vice president for campus life at Atlanta's Emory University. "We ask them to stop, and sometimes we're effective; sometimes we're not."

The fact that many college students, like Wynne, are under the legal drinking age is rarely an obstacle. Many drink at private parties off campus, with an older student buying the alcohol. Bars' enforcement of the drinking age can be lax, false IDs are common, and legal-age friends are often willing to buy the drinks and bring them back to the table. In fact, raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21, a movement that swept all 50 states over the past two decades, may actually have made the binging problem worse. Instead of drinking in well-monitored settings, the young often experiment in private homes and bars, where there are few checks in place to deter dangerous practices. And research suggests that making alcohol illegal may give it an illicit thrill for younger drinkers. "By setting a high drinking age, what we have inadvertently done is say that drinking is an adult activity, and that makes it especially appealing to younger people," says David Hanson, a sociologist who specializes in alcohol abuse and education. Fraternity parties are famous for drinking games that make a sport of quick and excessive consumption. Bars in college neighborhoods pull in students with all-you-can-drink policies--$6.50 for as much beer as a customer can hold--that make binge drinking a cost-effective strategy. With "beat the clock" and "ladder pricing," the prices start low and increase as the night wears on, encouraging students to drink fast while the booze is cheap. And bar owners are constantly thinking up new binge-friendly promotions, like "bladder busts," in which drinks are inexpensive until someone in the bar has to go to the bathroom, which raises the price for everyone.

Many colleges have been getting tougher on the issue. Schools are still handing out literature and holding workshops, but they know that education is not enough to solve the problem. "Vague know-when-to-say-when messages just don't mean a lot to students," says Erenberg. Administrators have become quicker to penalize campus groups that sponsor reckless parties. And more than 50 colleges now permit students to avoid temptation and rowdy behavior by living in alcohol-free dorms. "It's an effort to break into the campus alcohol culture and say it is possible to have a fulfilling college experience without drinking," says Alan Levy, a spokesman for the University of Michigan, where 30% of undergrads choose the alcohol-free option.

Some colleges have decided that the most direct way to combat alcohol abuse is to ban consumption on campus entirely. In 1995, after finishing at the top of The Princeton Review's party-school rankings two years in a row, the University of Rhode Island banned alcohol at all campus social events. Combined with tougher penalties for violations and greater efforts to educate students about responsible drinking, U.R.I. administrators say the new policy has dramatically changed the culture of the school. "For a long time, this community was going through a period of denial," says vice president for student affairs John McCray. Now, he adds, alcohol-related problems are down, "the SATs of the entering class are up, and our students are more serious."

But banning alcohol on campus does nothing about the dangers that lurk just outside. "You can have a perfect program on campus, but if you don't do anything about the liquor store across the street that sells to minors or the bar that serves intoxicated students, you haven't solved the problem," says William DeJong, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. The most important area for schools to focus on now, he says, is working with the larger community to ensure that students cannot abuse alcohol at private homes and bars.

In fact, some experts say that rather than driving students into the outside world by banning alcohol, colleges should encourage at least those who are of legal drinking age to drink responsibly on campus. L.S.U. had a schoolwide no-alcohol policy in effect the night Wynne died. But neither that policy nor the fact he was underage stopped him from finding a private party and an off-campus bar to serve him enough alcohol to end his life. As recently as five years ago, L.S.U. permitted fraternities to hold open-air beer blasts under the watchful eyes of campus police. "We had some injuries, mostly from horseplay and wrestling in the mud," says L.S.U. police captain Ricky Adams. "We never had anyone die."

--With reporting by Greg Fulton/Atlanta, Lisa McLaughlin/New York, Bill Walsh/Baton Rouge and Richard Woodbury/Denver

With reporting by GREG FULTON/ATLANTA, LISA MCLAUGHLIN/NEW YORK, BILL WALSH/BATON ROUGE AND RICHARD WOODBURY/DENVER