Frank*'s binge drinking began on a warm fall evening in September 2002. The 18-year-old freshman had just finished moving into Northeastern's Smith Hall, a dorm on Hemenway Street for his freshman year. students, when one of his roommates decided it was time to start drinking. “Out of nowhere he pulled out a huge bottle of Southern Comfort and invited a bunch of people over,” Frank said. “I was excited, because my idea of ​​coming to college was to party, have fun and meet lots of new people.” Frank says that that night, he, his roommate, and a few other Smith Hall freshmen drank the whole bottle. of Southern Comfort as well as a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka. "It was great. I was talking to a bunch of new people, socializing, having a good time, then it all caught up to me and the room started spinning. I finished and passed out in my bunk bed and I slept until the next afternoon." Frank's story is common on college campuses across the country. According to the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, a 2001 survey found that 44.4 percent of college students admit to drinking excessively. The study defines binge drinking as five drinks in a row for men and four in a row for women, with a drink consisting of a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or of a one and a half ounce shot of hard liquor. One hundred and nineteen four-year colleges in the United States were selected to participate in the study, to represent a random sample of male and female students enrolled in four-year colleges. The rate of binge drinking among white men like Frank was closer to 50%, meaning that about one in two white men at a university in the United States participated in binge drinking during their undergraduate studies. undergraduate. The study also indicates that "binges were often accompanied by academic difficulties, psychosocial problems, antisocial behavior, injuries, overdoses, high-risk sexual behavior and other risk-taking, such as driving while impaired by alcohol. “The natural question one might ask is why this is happening. Dr. Henry Wechsler, author of the HSPH College Alcohol Study, recently published a book on the subject, “Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses.” According to Dr. Wechsler's book, “The Availability