Blogging for Freedom

"General campaigns warning of the dangers of alcohol have not been effective, researchers said. They said it is better to teach students to resist peer pressure, show them how alcohol can interfere with academic goals and strictly enforce minimum-age laws. Task force members stressed a need for colleges and communities to work together to fight what they called the "culture of drinking" at U.S. colleges.

The study by the Task Force on College Drinking estimated that drinking by college students contributes to 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape. Also, 400,000 students between 18 and 24 years old reported having had unprotected sex as a result of drinking.

Motor vehicle fatalities were the most common form of alcohol-related deaths. The statistics included college students killed in car accidents if the students had alcohol in their blood, even if the level was below the legal limit.

Students who died in other alcohol-related accidents, such as falls and drownings, were included. Those who died as a result of homicides or suicides were not.

(The University of Wisconsin-Madison has long been considered one of the hardest-drinking campuses in the country, but in recent years, there has been only one student death clearly linked to alcohol. That was in April 2001 when a freshman, later determined to have a high blood-alcohol content, fell from a second-story balcony during a beer party.

(Also, between 1995 and 2000, 68% of reported sexual assaults at UW-Madison - 144 out of 213 - involved alcohol.)"  from Associated Press, April 2002