Higher Education: Crocked on Campus

Neal, a 21-year-old college student, knows he had a good time last September when he attended a costume party in suburban Los Angeles. He just can't remember it. After downing a dozen hits of vodka and cranberry juice, the University of Southern California senior staggered outside and passed out on a , nearby lawn. At 3 a.m., two strangers drove him back to campus. He fell over a bike rack, passed out again, then woke up to find one of L.A.'s finest snapping handcuffs on him. The police did not press charges, and the officer handed Neal over to a campus security guard, who had to drive him home at 5 a.m. Today, the young man has no remorse over anything about the evening -- except the '70s-style disco clothes he was wearing. "I was dressed like a complete moron," Neal recalls. "I wasn't really embarrassed about the rest."

Remorseless drinking has long been as much a ritual of university life as football, final exams and frat parties. Almost every college graduate can spin at least a few tales about a boisterous night of carousing that culminated in slugging shots of tequila at sunrise or tossing drained kegs into the president's pool. Even Thomas Jefferson had to contend with a group of drunken rowdies who caused a near riot at the school that he founded, the University of Virginia. Ever since then, periodic efforts to crack down on excessive alcohol consumption among young scholars have been largely futile. Enforcing strict rules on university turf seemed to push the parties off campus. Raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 in the 1980s merely triggered a boom in the business of creating fake ID cards.

Now there may be a new force for change. Students who are tired of paying $20,000 a year to have someone throw up on their shoes have launched a growing backlash against their inebriated peers. Not just freshmen, prodded by overanxious parents, but upperclassmen as well are demanding alcohol- and drug-free living and study environments. Even at party-hearty Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the students in an entire dorm have pledged to stay sober during their four years of school. Repentant drinkers, meanwhile, are helping organize Alcoholics Anonymous groups on campus.

Still small and somewhat timid, the campus temperance movement has taken its cue from antismoking campaigns. Restrictions on public smoking gained momentum after nonsmokers learned about the dangers of secondhand smoke. Once those in the smokeless majority realized that their own health and quality of life were directly affected, they stood up and demanded their right to a tobacco-free airspace. In the same way, more and more students who drink little or no alcohol have focused on the fact that other people's drunkenness isn't just unpleasant. It often leads to physical and sexual assaults and even death, especially when wasted students climb behind the wheel of a car. Enough is enough, say the campus rebels who want to stay sober.