A recent higher education survey found underage drinking among incoming freshmen is decreasing, but Penn State representatives say the university has seen a different trend.

John Pryor, director of Cooperative Institutional Research Program, said the survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles found that 43.4 percent of students said they occasionally or frequently engaged in drinking activities in high school. This number decreased from 73.7 percent in 1982, according to the survey.

The survey was based on the responses of 263,710 students from 385 different four-year universities across the country, Pryor said.

However, it is questionable if Penn State mirrors the results of this report, Tysen Kendig, Penn State spokesman, said.

"We are still seeing students, in general, end up in the emergency room for alcohol-related reasons, especially on weekends, at a very high rate, and we consider this to be a very serious problem," Kendig said.

The data for the 2005 fall semester for the number of visits to the emergency room for alcohol-related reasons was extremely high, University Health Services Educational Services Coordinator Linda LaSalle said.

"When the Penn State football team started to win, especially the Ohio State football game weekend, the number of alcohol-related visits drastically increased," LaSalle said.

The number of alcohol-related visits for the 2004-05 academic year increased to 229 compared to the 175 visits in the 2003-04 academic year.

The blood-alcohol level is also slowly increasing each year, and the average age of the students drinking is incrementally decreasing each year, LaSalle said.

"The other important thing about this data is that over these six years the percentage of female students who go to the emergency room is increasing," LaSalle said. "This is a trend that we are concerned about quite a bit."

The number of students who have engaged in underage drinking before college has also increased, said Andrea Dowhower, director of Student Affairs Research and Assessment.

There is not necessarily an increase or a decrease in the level of drinking at Penn State -- but a stable level of drinking that continues each year, LaSalle said.

"We know that the majority of our students are actually making positive and responsible decisions about drinking, but there is a high number of students who do involve in high-risk drinking," LaSalle said. "The percentage who engage in this level of drinking is stable, and we are and will continue to be concerned about it."

The survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of Los Angeles also found an increase of incoming freshmen engaged in community service.

Pryor said the trend could be attributed to the recent natural disasters.

There has been an increased interest among students at Penn State to become more involved with community service and to develop their leadership skills, Dowhower said.

Eric Fisher, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, said this has been the first year they have been tracking the membership, and it is a lot higher than they had anticipated.

"We have over 200 student volunteers who have put in more than 2,000 man hours working on our projects, which is a lot more than we had expected," Fisher said.

There have also been various efforts to enhance student learning and leadership through community service, which could also be contributed to the increased interest in community service, Dowhower said.

She said she has seen data that shows service-oriented universities are less likely to have high risk drinking rates, but she is unsure if the two trends found in the survey correlate.