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The issue has taken on increasing importance following the release of a recent national study reporting a major increase in binge drinking on college campuses and a year of high-profile, alcohol-related hospitalizations at Penn and deaths at schools from Massachusetts to Louisiana.
Last January, in response to several incidents of alcohol-related violence on campus, University President Judith Rodin appointed a special committee charged with making recommendations on how to combat binge drinking at Penn.
After months of discussion, the committee has finished a 10-page report outlining strategies to mitigate the campus' "culture of acceptance for excessive drinking" and coordinate the University's efforts at preventing and punishing the high-risk behavior associated with alcohol abuse.
The report makes a sweeping set of recommendations, including improving collection of data on binge drinking, notifying parents after any alcohol-related incident involving a student, and scheduling more classes on Fridays to discourage students from beginning weekend drinking on Thursday nights.
The committee's main recommendations, several committee members said, were the hiring of a "coordinator" to oversee and administer the University's academic, disciplinary and medical responses to problem drinkers and offer more non-alcoholic programming to students who might otherwise drink.
Leaders of Penn's Greek community criticized the report, however, for blaming fraternities' for campus alcohol abuse while ignoring the non-Greek party scene.
InterFraternity Council President Josh Belinfante, a College senior, took particular exception to the report's claim that "fraternities have played a major role in a significant number of alcohol-related instances of misconduct or life-threatening alcohol overdose."
"As far as mentioning frats, and only dabbling into the off-campus party scene, I find it a little inconsistent," he said, stressing that a crackdown on fraternities would lead to more unsupervised off-campus parties. He added that the suggested punishments for alcohol offenses contradict the report's attempt to be "more therapeutic and less punitive" to offenders.
Belinfante also said that the report's recommendations would not succeed in subduing Penn students' penchant for drinking.
"I don't think that a 21-year-old bartender is going to change an entire culture," he said, referring to the report's proposed age requirement for any on-campus party.
But Penn administrators maintain the report offers comprehensive and realistic suggestions for reducing binge drinking on campus.
"We have to make it clear that not everyone drinks and that there are a range of social activities for people who don't drink," Rodin said. "We have to change that part of the culture."
The 14-member committee finalized its recommendations this summer, and presented them to Rodin last week. The report will be made public in the near future, officials said.
The report recommends that the coordinator for Penn's anti-alcohol efforts be a faculty-level appointment with experience in student counseling and the treatment of substance abuse. The Psychiatry Department and the Medical Center's Council for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention have pledged partial salary support, the report said.
Among other changes to campus norms, the report also proposes a limit on the number of College of General Studies evening courses a student may take. Committee members said they heard instances of students taking night classes so they can "sleep in" after nights of heavy drinking.
The scope of the recommendations rankled some. Panhellenic Council President Janelle Brodsky, for example, criticized the committee for focusing on such minutiae.
But the College and Engineering senior said she is glad Rodin is focusing so much attention on alcohol abuse.
Other committee members said they advocated creating more alcohol-free recreational and social spaces on a campus permeated with bars.
"I encouraged them to... create a campus center where people could have fun, non-alcoholic events," said committee member Karen Pasternack, a 1998 College graduate. "If they increase the social space at Penn, I think that will reduce drinking."
University officials have taken steps toward that goal by pledging to turn the former Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity house at 3615 Locust Walk into a location for booze-free parties.
"We believe we've come up with something that's comprehensive," said Drug and Alcohol Resource Team adviser Kate Ward-Gaus, a committee member. "[These are] fresh, creative ways of intervening on the issue."
The report comes on the heels of a Harvard School of Public Health survey of college students that showed that while the percentage of binge drinkers among all students remained constant at about 40 percent, severe behavior intensified among students who drink.
Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in one sitting for men and ingesting four or more for women.
Among the findings were a 33 percent increase among students who "drink to get drunk" and that four out of five students living in Greek houses are binge drinkers.
The report also showed that students who drank heavily in high school are three times more likely to binge in college, a fact which troubles Belinfante.
"If the recommendations are implemented, it would go a long way to consolidating a broad approach to the problem," said Michele Goldfarb, director of the University's student judicial system.