"It's a very important matter that you actually have to pour beer into a cup instead of opening a tap," Lewis jokes. "This is very big stuff!"

"At some level this makes very little logical sense," he adds. "We are still going to allow alcohol."

Over the past several years, the College has been largely unwilling to experiment with or even discuss fundamental changes to the way it handles student drinking.

Lewis says his thinking on student drinking has been informed by the research of Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health.

But recommendations of Wechsler's that do not conform to Harvard's existing policies have received little notice from the administrators. The idea of a dry campus--something Wechsler considers a viable policy choice--has never come up in administrative circles, Lewis says.

"It has not been discussed to my knowledge," he writes in an e-mail. "We have not taken the viewpoint that the use of alcohol itself is wrong, only its abuse."

Despite Wechsler's feeling that heavy drinkers respond best to tough policies, disciplinary actions taken by the Ad Board for underage drinking have never risen to the level of what the College considers actual punitive measures--probation or worse--Lewis says.