You don't need to read the findings from a survey on student drinking that hang on the bulletin boards in the Boucke Building to know that many Penn State students should reform their drinking habits. We only need to look down the hall in our dorms, fraternities and apartments to see someone passing out and being rushed to the hospital or throwing up after a night of excessive drinking.

These incidents have occurred on my floor in Beaver Hall this year, and even in LIFE (Living in a Free Environment) House, students vomited last year.

If people throw up in Life House, the one place at Penn State where students aren't supposed to return to the House drunken or have substances in their rooms, then there must be a drinking problem. And, I'm almost positive everyone reading this has seen someone vomiting or urinating uncontrollably at Penn State, excluding some freshmen who have yet to witness such a site.

It's not drinking in general that I can't understand or angers me. Rather, it's my neighbor from home asking me, "What else is there to do at Penn State besides drink when there are no football games?"

What also infuriates me is that binge drinking mishaps sadly give Penn State, our academically prestigious university, a reputation as a drinking school.

I have heard from multiple students that going to social fraternities becomes boring after several visits to such well cultured (maybe in the art of vomit cleanup and beer pong, but in little else) establishments.

Whether students binge drink at fraternity parties or apartment parties, a January 2000 study from the Penn State Student Affairs Research and Assessment Office reveals Penn State's overall binge-drinking rates greatly exceed the national average.

Of the students that attend Penn State, 64 percent of males drink five or more drinks in one sitting and 51 percent of women drink 4 or more drinks in one sitting.

These statistics are troubling to me and to high-ranking members of this university. Binge drinking is rampant here. Is this ever going to be a dry campus?

Not while any of the current students are here.

I really don't understand why the university administration doesn't try to pass, fund, and implement a proven, newspaper-based advertising campaign that encourages drinkers to drink in moderation. Such a plan has aided the University of Arizona in their efforts to curb binge drinking and I don't know why the administration has not tried it here.

From 1995 to 1998, The Daily Wildcat at the University of Arizona ran ads encouraging more moderate drinking, appealing to the idea that a few drinks is a social norm. In that three-year span, The Daily Wildcat, a large state university newspaper similar in circulation numbers to the Collegian, binge drinking levels plummeted nearly 13 percentage points at Arizona.

Drinking in moderation, when you think about it, applies to most adult social life. Most people don't get trashed at their wedding or a friend's wedding. And it wouldn't be a good idea to get smashed at a corporate party.

Heck, some corporations don't serve alcohol at parties because they are afraid that they may be liable if an employee smashes their car after a party.

So, drinking in moderation isn't a radical idea for a campaign.

The effectiveness of Arizona's ad campaign can be seen in the drop in binge drinking at Arizona as well as in all the negative consequences associated with excessive drinking. We all know of the negative effects of drinking: having a hangover, missing class, doing something you later regret, initiating violence and the list still continues.

Naturally, all the negative effects from excessive drinking declined at the University of Arizona after the ad campaign.

If Penn State implemented a program similar to Arizona's and if it had similar effects at Penn State, calculating that some 60 percent of Penn State's overall population binge drinks, and the effect a 13 percent drop would have on these rates, 5,200 less students would have to face the problems incurred from binge drinking.

Since it's clear some students here don't take the responsibility to engage in a more normal adult social life than binge drinking, the Penn State administration should take action and explore the financial costs of undertaking an ad campaign to promote the idea of drinking in moderation. However, cost should not be as large an issue as the reputation of Penn State.

I don't know why university administration hasn't tried such a plan at Penn State up to this point.

They should start moving immediately on this plan in order to reduce the amount of students who give this university a false reputation as a place where there's nothing else to do besides watch football and get drunk.