Surprise! You're a binge drinker

Of all the things to do after the homework is put away, something about binge drinking makes it a significantly popular leisure activity on college campuses nationwide. This could certainly be true at IU. It has been said in the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study that 54 percent of students here binge drink regularly.\nOkay, so we've got the time and money to spend on alcohol thanks to lax class schedules and parents' pocketbooks. Let's all get wasted and puke! Yeah! \nWe can treat our residencies like extended hotel stays! Water damage? Wrong -- that's beer, baby! But who really cares? We'll be out in a few years anyway, replaced by a new generation ready to cruise a mattress or two.\nIt sounds like fun, but is this really what half our campus is doing in their free time? Wouldn't we see the devastation? Considering our beautiful campus is not yet blanketed in a layer of beer bottles and used condoms, maybe all-night benders and wanton destruction are not as popular at IU as Harvard makes them out to be, and the distinction of being half drunks is a bit undeserved.\nStill, the study has found that over half our campus binge drinks. Harvard wouldn't lie, would they? Probably not, but they might bend reality a little so they look more important.\nThe Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a binge as "an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence." Not bad terminology, but when you're on the Harvard study, you don't really have to take Webster's word for it, do you?\nHenry Weschler, one of the study's authors, officially defined binge drinking as the consumption of five or more drinks in one night at anytime over a two-week period. This means students could have one beer an hour for five hours, having no traces of alcohol in their systems, not have another drink for 14 days, and still be labeled binge drinkers.\nEvidently the alcohol experts at Harvard are lightweights, and -- wouldn't you know it -- over half of IU falls into their overly-accessible category.\nBe sure to check Merriam-Webster in a few years to see if "misleading" is defined as "five or more Harvard professors making up numbers to add legitimacy to their salaries."\nUnfortunately, these same misleading statistics are used to form colleges' alcohol policies and encourage police to prey on students safely walking on sidewalks. These exaggerated numbers influence the public's opinion of collegiate culture more than all the degrees earned from all the universities across the nation. People are not looking at the students labeled binge drinkers thinking they might have a few social rounds now and again. They assume we are alcoholics, and they demand action.\nThis is one way drinking became an irremovable thorn stuck in the sides of universities across the country. Universities have taken upon themselves the moral obligation of preventing alcohol consumption on their campuses. There is only one problem: Drinking is legal.\nConsequently, University higher-ups do all they can to appear tough on alcohol consumption without actually preventing it. There can be no final solution, no agreement struck between the IU administration and the student body to lower its BAC. \nFor college administrations, the pressure to lower binge drinking creates a need to constantly invent new anti-alcohol programs that are doomed to failure. Students must bear endless advertising campaigns and periodic spurs in drinking enforcement, but neither has any significant effect. Worst of all, responsible students are caught in the middle of a cultural crossfire in a collegiate catch-22 where everyone loses.