The College usually handles alcohol incidents with administrative warnings, and when incidents do reach the Ad Board, the body seldom does little more than issue its own warnings. Lewis stresses that the focus of the College's response to alcohol abuse is on counseling students rather than on reprimanding them.

DeGreeff says other colleges take a much tougher stance on alcohol abuse. Babson College fines students $50 for underage drinking and the University of Delaware sends letters home to the parents of students who break drinking rules.

Legally, Harvard's policy could certainly be stricter, but Lewis says he sees no reason to take substantial steps in that direction.

Administrators have also been reluctant to explore the idea of "social norms initiatives" which aim to educate students about moderate drinking. Experts who favor such initiatives tend to argue that Wechsler's characterization of many college drinkers as binge drinkers polarizes campuses into heavy drinkers and abstainers.

Advocates of the initiatives say that colleges can counteract binge drinking by displaying signs informing students that most people party responsibly, drinking only a couple of beers per night.

But Wechsler calls this a "Madison Avenue approach" to student drinking, arguing that it advertises the problem rather than helping to fix it.

Lewis says he has heard conflicting reports on the initiatives and has not reached a decision on whether they could be effective at Harvard.

"Things that might work in one place might not work in another," Lewis says. "We haven't had any real discussions."