A new study showing nearly half of the national college student population binge drinks regularly drew criticism from several Syracuse University students, but not because of the findings.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Survey (CAS), which was conducted at 119 major four-year universities, two out of every five students surveyed said that they had engaged in binge drinking within the last two weeks. Binge drinking, which is described as having five or more alcoholic drinks in a sitting for a man and four or more drinks in a sitting for a woman, left several SU students to believe that the definition is too rigid.

“When I think of binge drinking, I think about drinking to get drunk,” said Brooke Parker, a senior public relations and economics major.

Parker, along with her friend Melissa Non, said that they had binge drank over the weekend by the standards used in the survey, pointing out the difference between a social drinking atmosphere and one where inebriation is the main objective.

“Binge drinking is downing as many pitchers as fast as you can,” said Non, a senior public relations major. “Not sitting around with your friends and drinking.”

Non also said that she thinks of binge drinking as more of a “guy thing” because of peer pressure in social situations containing alcohol that women do not have to deal with as much as men do.

SU spokesman Kevin Morrow said that he was not sure if SU was one of the 119 universities used in the surveys.

Gideon Pfeffer, a bartender at Darwin’s Restaurant & Bar, 701 S. Crouse Ave., agreed that the binge drinking definition is too broad and should be taken on a case-by-case basis, depending on the size and experience of the drinker.

“The majority of the people that come in here catch a buzz after five drinks,” said Pfeffer, a senior in the School of Management.

He said that he would define the practice of binge drinking as “drinking to get fucked up and black out,” not by any specific number of drinks consumed.

Pfeffer, who works Thursday and Friday nights, normally the busiest nights of the week, said he is usually only one of several bartenders working. Because of this, he is normally unable to keep track of the number of drinks that a customer has consumed in one night. He also said that it is his responsibility to cut off a customer from drinking if they show certain warning signs.

Another campus area bartender, Ari Cretu, who works at Konrad’s, 113 Marshall St., said that the new figures should not be misconstrued to seem like anyone who drinks more than four to five drinks at a time has a drinking problem or is an alcoholic.

“Just cause you drink three nights in a row at a heavy rate doesn’t make you an alcoholic,” said Cretu, an senior accounting and finance major.

Pfeffer also said that the stigma associated with the term binge drinking is a lot harsher than the current number of drinks associated with it.

“If binge drinking is four to five in a night, then I have a serious problem,” he said.

Published on April 7, 2002 at 12:00 pm