Quandary for colleges: how to battle binge drinking

Students aren't sure of the best strategies either. "There has to be some sort of generational shift away from feeling that getting super-drunk is a cool and fun thing to do," says Kent Green, news editor at the University of Colorado's student newspaper. "I don't know how you do that."

A small number of colleges have made themselves "dry" - banning alcohol use everywhere on campus, including dorms and pubs. Strict enforcement of alcohol rules also appears to be on the rise: The University of Oklahoma is emphasizing its three-strikes policy, which mandates suspension after the third time students are caught with alcohol.

The University of Colorado, which had been suspending about 30 students a year for alcohol violations, now only allows two strikes instead of three.

"It is actually very strict," says administrator Robert Maust, who oversees alcohol and drug abuse policies. "You could be suspended just for being in the presence of alcohol, even if everybody agrees it's not your alcohol and you weren't drinking."

Fraternities are also under heavy fire these days - not surprisingly, given the close link between the fraternity culture and alcohol abuse.

Fraternity house residents are twice as likely as other students to indulge in binge drinking, according to the Harvard School of Public Health's 2001 College Alcohol Study.

The death of Gordie Bailey was tied to a fraternity initiation rite, and the alcohol-related deaths of the students at Colorado State and at the University of Oklahoma occurred at fraternity houses.

Nationwide, about 30 colleges now ban alcohol in fraternity houses. Other schools have moved "rush" - the time when fraternities initiate new pledges - away from the fall, when freshmen are targeted immediately after entering school.

And some schools are also casting a wider net in seeking out those who facilitate alcohol abuse on or near campus. Some administrators are now putting pressure on liquor stores and bars where "ladies' nights" and happy-hour drink specials attract hordes of bargain-hunting students.

"When you look at the bars, they surround some schools," White says. "Where you have a lot of alcohol outlets and cheap drinks, that's usually the problem."

Faced with embarrassing public displays of drunkenness, the University of Colorado played hardball.

"When the bars used to offer drink specials at 7 a.m. on commencement morning, we had to sit down with them and say, 'You're really harming your universities, you're dumping drunks out at 8 a.m. who are staggering over to our stadium,' " Mr. Maust recalls.

The university bought advertising for the bars that agreed to stop the drink specials, and it sent complaint letters to the local beverage control board about the ones that didn't. According to Maust, the letters essentially said, "These are not good neighbors, and we want you to know that."

Under pressure, the bars have stopped the drink specials and some may close entirely on commencement morning, Maust says.

But letters to bars and two-strikes policies aren't enough for Lanahan, Bailey's stepfather.

Only a full assault on the alcohol "culture" on campus will prove genuinely effective in reducing the dangers of excessive drinking by students, he insists.

Parents can help too, he believes, in part at least by reminding schools that they are consumers who wield financial clout and that they have the power to either reward or punish schools for their degree of success - or failure - in handling alcohol problems. To that end, he has formed a foundation in his stepson's memory that aims to offer ratings of how colleges handle alcohol issues.

"You can't just react to these problems," he says. "You've got to be ahead of them, protecting kids leaving home, or else parents will vote to send them elsewhere."

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