by Henry Wechsler

About the author: Henry Wechsler is director of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, an ongoing survey of 15,000 students at 140 four-year colleges in 40 states.

Since results from our first survey were published [in 1994], heavy episodic alcohol use or “binge drinking” among college students has become a nationally recognized problem. Seventy percent of college presidents consider binge drinking a problem for their institutions, but they don’t know how to counteract it. This is no surprise, since there has not, up to now, been sufficient, scientifically credible information about what is effective. Some approaches seem promising, but they usually have been evaluated on a single campus only, often without control groups.

In this article, we are now able to...