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<p>Actually, asking students on a tour probably won’t give you accurate information. Questions about “binge drinking” are on every national survey administered by colleges. The question is “How many times have you had five or more drinks on one occassion (four for women in some surveys) over the last two weeks?”</p>
<p>Have done so once gets counted as a binge drinker. The national average is 44% of college students. More than twice gets counted as a “frequent binge drinker” and that number is typically hafl of the binge drinkers.</p>
<p>A college at or above the national average is going to feel like a heavy drinking school in ost cases. The real disruption comes from the frequent binge drinkers. A low binge drinking school (the women’s colleges and others like Swarthmore, Pomona, and so forth) might have 33% binge drinkers, 33% light/occasional drinkers, and 33% non-drinkers. This gives the light and non-drinkers a strong, even dominant, determiining presense on campsus and shift peer pressure/community standards against frequent binge drinking.</p>
<p>A school with a 50% binge drinking rate is likely to have a full quarter of the students getting plastered drunk more than once a week. That is a very oppressive culture for light and non-drinkers.</p>