"We're really putting our energy into the culture of abuse," says Kathleen Deignan, an administrator in Princeton's dean of student life office.

Some Princeton students wonder how much the administration does at all.

"They basically let you drink, as long as you aren't troublesome about it--as long as you're not raucous and loud," says Willmot H. Kidd, a junior at Princeton.

The student perspective is telling, for an alcohol policy's severity is not measured by the policy itself but by the extent of its application. Colleges that enforce their alcohol policies are strict. Those that don't, are not.

"We really wish we didn't have to deal with a 19-year-old who's having a beer watching the World Series," Deignan says.

Alexander G. Liebman, a junior at Yale University, says the administration at his school is pretty relaxed about alcohol--in part, he says, because of concern for the safety of their students.

"My take on it," he says, "is that they want to keep people from searching far and wide for alcohol and getting into dangerous situations.... If there's a problem with someone drinking, then all the support resources are right here, instead of someone getting drunk at some frat party and passing out in the basement."

But Harvard's policy is different than his counterparts at other Ivies.