"Harvard students do drink," wrote Lewis in an e-mail message. "The problem we do have is to persuade some Harvard students that six or eight beers in an hour is a lot of alcohol."

In large part, Harvard's policies are responsibly designed to accept this truth. Looming in the shadows of any discussion of this nature is the very real possibility that students will die from alcohol poisoning, and that is a concern that trumps all others.

Those concerns were highlighted in 1993, when Henry Wechsler, a professor at the School of Public Health, released his now-famous study of binge drinking on college campuses. The study articulated a perception that had been growing for years without any hard scientific data--that binge drinking was much more prevalent on campuses than had been previously imagined.

The study was the first to evaluate so-called "secondary binge effects"--the consequences of drinking born by students who do not, themselves, drink. These effects include everything from the sober roommate who stays up all night take care of the drunk roommate to the woman who is sexually assaulted by an intoxicated acquaintance.

With the study in mind, two considerations emerged for college administrators crafting policy. The first and most urgent, college administrators say, is that of abusive drinking--drinking that hurts drinkers and the people they come into contact with.

The second is underage drinking.

And while in theory, an underage drinker can drink responsibly, just as it is possible for a legal drinker to drink irresponsibly, the College's zero-tolerance policy is designed to prevent both abusive and underage drinking.

But according to some students and former proctors, Harvard's alcohol policy, like any other, is not perfect, and some of its kinks are counter-productive.