"If you go to the Mt. Auburn Hospital or the Cambridge Hospital, not only will you get a bill, but your parents could get notified," Rosenthal says. "The type of care you are putting yourself into is going to be acute medicine care.... You are going to be next to all sorts of issues."

But while Rosenthal still advocates UHS as the safest haven for an underage drunk, Lewis says the College cannot ignore abuses of its rules and federal laws.

"We're watching to see what happens...any place where people are drinking," Lewis says. "We know our students are involved in abusive levels of drinking."

One junior says she understands the the College needs to enforce its alcohol policy, but her experience with UHS and administrative board has convinced her that the College may be harming its students with its current procedures.

"I don't have a problem with an alcohol policy, and I don't have a problem with the fact that because it's state law they can't condone drinking, and they are trying to make some sort of precedent," the junior says. "[But breaching medical confidentiality] is the most dangerous thing the school could do."

Currier House Allston Burr Senior Tutor John D. Stubbs Jr. '80 says it is important that students feel comfortable bringing friends to seek medical attention.

"The objective is to try to find a way where people can act responsibly and not fear repercussions for having done so," Stubbs says.

Alcohol Policy

When Henry Wechsler, a lecturer at the School of Public Health, released his 1990 national study findings that 44 percent of college students binge drink, college administrators were reminded that alcohol remained a danger on campuses nationwide.

"The Wechsler study made university administrators everywhere acutely aware of the dangers, particularly of binge drinking among students of college age, and of the behavioral problems that accompany binge drinking" Nathans writes in an e-mail letter.

Wechsler's study, which defines binge drinking as consuming five drinks (four for women) at least once every two weeks on a single occasion, emphasizes the behavioral aspects of heavy drinking.

"Wechsler's work also made people (not just at Harvard) more acutely aware of how much fallout there is from binge drinking: in inconvenience to students, in inconvenience to roommates and friends, in violence and sexual assault, etc.," Nathans writes. "The College of course continues to hold students responsible for their behavior."

But beyond increasing awareness of the effects of drinking among students, some College officials say they have seen intensified enforcement of the alcohol policy.

"The College as a whole is under greater scrutiny by the state and federal enforcement agencies, and I think the University has been forced to follow the rules more closely than it has in the past," says Karel F. Liem, the master of Dunster House.

Liem says much of the increased pressure to enforce college rules has come from the attention the federal government has paid to alcohol policies.