Higher Education: Crocked on Campus

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Restraint can be a tough sell, though, especially among young people who have just escaped their parents' watchful eyes and are eager to become free spirits. "There may be more of us who say something about the drinking now," says Danielle Moore, a 22-year-old senior at Dartmouth who left her sorority in the summer of her sophomore year to join 54 other students in the school's alcohol- and drug-free dorm. "But you still feel the pressures and the isolation if you choose to go through your college years without drinking. There is a perception that we're uptight or antisocial."

Yet some students are pleasantly surprised by the liquor-free zones. Sheila Meneves, 18, is no teetotaler. But dormitory space at the University of California at Berkeley is so limited that students take what they can get. So when Meneves moved into Freeborn, a no-alcohol-allowed residence for 228 students, she expected to be bored beyond endurance. Instead, she's become a convert to the concept. "I have time to study here because there's no noise and there's no one throwing up in the hallway at all hours of the night," she says. "It's just like any other dorm with the exception that it's cleaner and quieter." Sounds like something that could catch on.

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Survey of 140 U.S. Colleges by the Harvard School of Public Health}]CAPTION: The Troubles that "Frequent Binge Crinkers" Create for...

Themselves and Others