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Josh Youse, a Unity College resident adviser, says he often encounters alcohol-related problems as part of his job.

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BINGE DRINKING - WHAT IS IT?

BINGE DRINKING is the ingestion of large amounts of alcohol in one session – for men, defined as five drinks in a row; for women, four drinks in a row.

IN MAINE, 46 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds reported binge drinking in the prior month. That ranked 21st nationally.

UTAH had the lowest binge-drinking rate in that age group, at 28.3 percent. NORTH DAKOTA had the highest rate at 56 percent.

2006 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

UMAINE ALCOHOL INCIDENTS

In Orono, the number of student alcohol-related incidents handled by Orono's Office of Community Standards, Rights and Responsibilities, the campus disciplinary office, tripled from less than 100 in 1999 to more than 300 last year.

WARNING SIGNS FOR ALCOHOL POISONING

• Mental confusion, stupor, coma or person cannot be roused.
• Vomiting
• Seizures
• Slow breathing (fewer than eight breaths per minute).
• Irregular breathing (10 seconds or more between breaths).
• Hypothermia (low body temperature), bluish skin color, paleness.

IF ALCOHOL POISONING GOES UNTREATED

• Victim chokes on his or her own vomit.
• Breathing slows, becomes irregular, or stops.
• Heart beats irregularly or stops.
• Hypothermia (low body temperature).
• Hypoglycemia (too little blood sugar) leads to seizures.
• Untreated severe dehydration from vomiting can cause seizures, brain damage or death.

Information courtesy National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

First of two parts

At midnight last Halloween, Josh Youse rushed to the room of a Unity College freshman who had passed out from drinking at an off-campus party and been carried back to her room to sleep it off.

Youse, a resident adviser at Eastview residential hall, tried to rouse her. Instead of waking, she started dry-heaving.

Youse called for help, and emergency medical personnel managed to wake her and determined she would be OK.

This was not an isolated event, Youse said. Encounters with alcohol-related violence, property damage and aggression at his college's small rural campus of 520 students in Unity are a regular part of his job.

"People's cars have been messed with. People individually have been messed with," said Youse, 23, a senior from Kutztown, Pa. "I don't know how to fix it."

Reports of college alcohol abuse have increased in the decade since binge drinking and other alcohol problems on campuses became a national issue, and seven years after Maine colleges and universities banded together to address the problem by forming Maine's Higher Education Alcohol Prevention Project.

"It is the largest single health and educational problem we have on campuses today. It needs to be front and center in all our conversation regarding college, college students and their risky behavior," said Dr. Paul Berkner, medical director of Colby College's Garrison-Foster Health Center.

Liquor law violations are increasing at Maine's colleges and universities. Statewide, the number of liquor law violations, such as underage drinking, reported by Maine higher education institutions to the U.S. Department of Education rose 57 percent from 2002 to 2006, the most recent data available.

The number of drinking-related incidents involving arrests or disciplinary actions reported by Maine colleges grew from 1,985 in 2002 to 3,120 in 2006. Nationally, 196,860 arrests and disciplinary actions were reported in 2002, compared with 251,462 in 2006, a 28 percent increase.

Twice in the current school year, Maine college students have died in alcohol-related accidents.

In November, Brett Gould, a freshman at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, was killed in an alcohol-related crash while returning to school after a weekend of off-campus partying.

Three weeks later, Adam Baxter, a freshman University of Maine soccer player from England, died over Thanksgiving weekend at a Portland home from acute alcohol intoxication after drinking with friends. Two young men are now awaiting trial on felony charges of supplying liquor to Baxter and several other minors.

Both Maine Maritime and University of Maine officials had just undertaken new measures to curb alcohol abuse among freshmen when the deaths occurred. Officials at other Maine campuses say it is only luck that has spared them similar tragedies.

"Every night I go to sleep there is some part of my brain asking, 'Is this going to be the night I get the phone call?' " Berkner said.

Each year, about 100 students at Colby College in Waterville are treated at the college health center for possible alcohol overdose. About 50 of those students wind up at Maine General Medical Center's emergency room in Waterville.

Every year, several cases are serious enough to be moved to the intensive care unit, such as one last winter when a security guard discovered a student who had passed out and required a ventilator.

At Saint Joseph's College of Maine in Standish, there were 345 liquor law violations among a student body of 1,050 in 2006, the latest data available. The college had the highest number of violations as a percentage of student enrollment in Maine that year, 33 percent.

Colby College had the second-highest rate at 19 percent. Both attribute their high numbers to vigorous enforcement of their liquor policies.

COMMON SUBJECT NOW, THEN

Alcohol-abuse...