Second semester is less than a month old, but fair Harvard already has my classmates in harness, and she's laying on the whip. The fleeting pleasures of intersession have been forgotten, and from Pfoho to Dunster everyone is diligently plowing ahead toward midterms and beyond. Not a moment can be wasted, not when there are job applications to fill out, interviews to undergo, labs to perform, papers to write and never ever enough time for all of it.

But me? Honestly, I'm pretty relaxed. Sure, I've got the usual assortment of academic burdens and summer job stresses, and sometimes the weight of the world does seem to be pressing rather heavily on my spindly Anglo-Saxon shoulders. But no matter what happens, I've always got something to put a spring in my step. You see, I'm a binge drinker.

Isn't that a great term? Say it with me--biiiinge drinnnnnker. Doesn't it just roll off your tongue, conjuring up images of parties where the walls ooze alcohol, where keg beer flows like a Niagara down the stairs, where Bluto and Flounder and all the rest of the Animal House gang hold court? Frankly, doesn't it just scream debauchery?

Now I'll be honest: When it comes to carousing and suckling at the teat of demon rum, I always imagined myself to be, well, a bit of a lightweight. Did I enjoy a nip of Jack Daniels, a snifter of sherry or a tall glass of Spaten from time to time? Sure. But did I binge drink? Surely not. Surely that was reserved for the hardier types, the Spee-men and Sigma Chi brothers, the strapping rowers and the bosomy Grille girls.

But then, in the pages of The Crimson, I read with mounting amazement that one can qualify as a "binge drinker" if one has, not eight or 18 or 28, but a scant five drinks in a single night. Forty-six percent of Harvard students, the study reported, make the cut--myself included. And 12 percent have the temerity to binge drink frequently--more than twice every two weeks, if you can imagine.

The whole alarmist business, from the study itself and the concerned murmurs of administrators and cops to the posturing of the beer-baiters at the Harvard School of Public Health, is just brimming with puritanical zeal. Forty-six percent, we are told, in hushed tones, like passers-by at a funeral. How terrible--these kids are just out of control--whatever can we do?

The puritans are quite right, of course. It is terrible that 46 percent of Harvardians "binge drink," and that 12 percent do so relatively often. It's just awful--because it means that 54 percent of Harvard students seldom drink at all.

This, I have decided while watching my overburdened classmates straggle through what are supposed to be the best years of their lives, is the problem with life here in lovely, chilly Cantabridgia. There isn't enough drinking--not nearly enough! Alcohol is expensive, parties are lame and everyone has a paper due the next day and a resume to pad. No one has the time to enjoy the simpler pleasures in life: the rich, loamy taste of a Guinness pint, the bubbly bite of a gin and tonic, the subtle musk of a fine merlot. Put bluntly, no one has time to just chill out and have a drink.