"Everyone had a good time, and there didn't seem to be any enforcement of the rules," she says.

The guys who lived downstairs from her, Wirth recounted, often had kegs in their room. Once, she says, when one of the kegs sprung a leak, beer dripped through the floor and into the administrative offices only floor above the office of then-president Derek C. Bok.

"The guys got their hands slapped," she recalls. "Everyone thought it was funny."

But for Lewis, the College does not enforce its alcohol policy for the sake of being punitive, explaining that in his five years as dean, no student has been sanctioned by the Administrative Board solely for underage drinking.

Instead, Harvard's attitude toward drinking is prompted more by a concern for the wellness of its undergraduates, who, Lewis says, are not often in the position to distinguish between responsible and irresponsible drinking.

"Students' safety and wellbeing are my primary concern, and all the unhappy consequences and accompaniments of abusive drinking," Lewis wrote.

"A large number of our disciplinary cases, reported sexual assaults, and the like are associated with judgment that has been clouded by drunkenness. If at all possible we'd like to have students understand these dangers in some other way than by learning from [an] unhappy experience."