"If Harvard is similar to the nation, it is actually lower than the rest of the Northeast," Perkins says.

Harvard students recognize their less-than-lush lifestyle, with three-quarters classifying themselves as infrequent, light or moderate drinkers.

"Those that do drink probably just [drink] Friday and Saturday and probably just two or three beers," says Frank W. Petty '02.

As a result, the sheer number of binge drinkers at Harvard is not as significant a statistic as it is on the national level, Wechsler says. The number of Harvard binge drinkers is deceptively high if frequency is not taken into account.

"Binging isn't the discriminating factor here," Wechsler says.

Less frequent binge drinking at Harvard also leads to dramatically lower levels of intoxication. Less than a fifth of Harvard students binged more than twice in the last month, while more than a third of college students on a national level did so.

No Drinks, No Problems

Since Harvard students do not binge drink as much as their counterparts across the country, they are less likely to suffer negative consequences as a result of their drinking.

Harvard students are less than half as likely as the average college students to miss a class due to drinking, fall behind in school or forget where they were or what they did, and only a tenth say drinking has affected their academics.

"We've been impressed by the maturity and wisdom of undergraduates," says James H. Ware, master of Cabot House. "The data that I pay attention to is how often I encounter a situation where a student is in difficulty because of alcohol. The number of times a student has an injury or gets in some type of trouble is very rare."

Less than ten percent of students said they have engaged in unplanned sexual activity because of alcohol, compared to 23 percent of students nationally. Only seven students out of 353 surveyed said they had sex while too drunk to consent, and only one reported getting in trouble with police because of alcohol use, while eight percent of the nation's students said they had.

"Even if students are drinking five drinks in a row as much as once a weekend...they typically manage that without the kind of incidents that would engage the attention of the police or...administration," Ware says.

Harvard students tend to minimize the amount and impact of alcohol use and widely underestimate the prevalence of binge drinking on campus.

Most students think that less than 30 percent of Harvard students binge drink, far less than the 46 percent who actually do, and a majority of students estimated that less than 10 percent of their friends binge drink.

Perhaps because of the comparative lack of alcohol-related problems, the College has not disciplined a student through the Administrative Board exclusively for drinking in the past five years, according to Lewis. The College, says Lewis, is much more concerned with ensuring the health of its students.

"The main thing we are worried about is someone dying or being seriously hurt," he writes in an e-mail message.