And from Bacon's point of view. "The most encouraging fact brought out by the survey is that the overwhelming majority of college students who drink do so twice a month or less."

On these Occasions 72 percent most frequently drink beer, 21 percent spirits, and the rest wines. The Center arbitrarily classed six bottles of beer, six glasses of wine, and four glasses of spirits as "larger amounts" and found very few students who consumed that much as the average sitting.

Hence 33 percent of the males and 92 percent of the females polled had never been drank, and two-thirds of the men and nine-fouths of the woman had never passed out.

A post-script on this subject was the author's statement that "from the findings of our study we may venture a guess that six percent of the male student drinkers and at most one percent of the woman manifest positive signs of being potential problem drinkers."

While more than half the people in the survey scorn the drunk--particularly the inebriated female, three-fifths of the undergraduates would permit drinking in moderation. And over "40 percent of the students accept the quiet abstainer but express rejection of the militant 'dry.'"

After discussing social feelings about college drinking, the report moved into a study of "Beliefs about Drinking and Sexual Behavior," which prompted one columnist to label the book a "Booze Kinsey." But its sales fall far below Kinsey's records, thus indicating that society is more curious about its neighbors' bedrooms than its barrooms.

The authors of Drinking in College, however, were uncertain about the relationship between alcohol and sex, so they neither supported nor denied the Ogden Nash theory that "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

Apparently drink sometimes strengthens a pass defense and on other occasions weakens it. Around three-fifths of the students did feel that drinking generally accompanies or facilitates petting, however.

This section and other parts of the book thus correct much popular misinformation and prejudice, but as one Harvard man stated, "It tells us all about the average college drinker; yet I've been in Cambridge four years and haven't seen an average guy yet."

The book purposely listed and discussed the total findings of the 27 colleges studied, without breaking them down into the different types of institutions. In the fuzzy mind of the reader there lay west of the Ivy League a vast Beer Belt, where drinking behavior bore little resemblance to that in his habitat.

He knew that he had read the definitive work on drinking in American colleges; yet he felt although the report included the Ivy League minority, that its composite findings had little relevance to these New England deviants and dissenters.

But there was still something else troubling the reader. It seemed that making a science out of drinking, as they do at Yale, took almost all the fun out of it--if anything could.