For some, college is a blur.

At the University of Wyoming, a party-minded freshman has to learn fast where she can find her next drink. The frat scene is popular among Greeks and the younger crowd, and bars, for the most part, are the destinations of those with valid IDs.

House parties, on the other hand, are for everyone.

But house parties have no regulations regarding how much booze is too much. There are no bartenders to cut off a drunken teenager, and no bouncer to stave off a brawl. That leaves teenagers, and their more senior counterparts, to monitor their own and one another's intake and activity.

University of Northern Colorado freshman Mary Jones (not her real name) didn't take long after coming to school in Greeley to get in the swing of things.

"The guys there kept giving me shots, and so I took them," she said. "After my tenth shot I am not sure what happened, but a little while later I woke up and I was watching a movie."

The ill effects of excessive drinking, including the memory loss described, are what college campus officials and students are fighting.

At UW, President Phil Dubois is steering efforts towards responsible drinking and not trying to create an alcohol-free, or dry, campus. UW Assistant Dean of Students Matt Caires said Dubois supports programs such as AWARE (Alcohol Wellness Awareness Research Education) which work on making drinking safer.

"The president stresses safe, healthy, and responsible drinking," Caires said. "We know that we cannot prevent drinking, but we want to try and help them more responsible, and not get behind a wheel or drink more than is healthy."

Most of the goals of the campus programs like AWARE are to avoid and prevent unhealthy drinking and binging, and memory loss.

According to a survey by the Core Institute of Student Health Studies, based in Illinois and involving students on campuses across the United States, 32 percent of the students polled reported experiencing memory loss from drinking at some time.

Jenny Haubenreiser, Montana State University director of health promotions and co-chairwoman for the National College Health Assessment survey, said that even at 32 percent, heavy drinking involving memory loss is not the norm.

"There is heavy drinking on campuses and students who experience blacking out and throwing up, but it is not the majority of the population," she said. "Ten percent of the population account for about three-fourths of the alcohol consumed."

If that's the case, that 10 percent doesn't seem to be letting up.

Clinton Haskins is serving 14 to 20 years in prison for killing eight fellow UW athletes in an alohol-related wreck south of Laramie in 2001. The wreck was a catalyst for reducing the legal blood alchol limit in Wyoming from 0.1 to 0.08 last year. But still, Albany County, home of Laramie and UW, wholesale wine and spirit sales was up 6.4 percent increase from 2001 to 2002.

Programs that target problem drinkers - emphasizing that 10 percent - are different from programs that target all underage or campus drinking. They emphasize the danger of binge drinking.

Those that target the majority - such as UW's AWARE - focus on responsible drinking, knowing when enough is enough.

UW has also formed a group called the "A-team," composed of members of the community and university staff. This group helps educate students of the harm of drinking, and educate them after they have fallen into trouble.

"We teach education classes and try to teach students what is the "social norm" for drinking, meaning what other people really do drink in a night, and help them to understand things like a drinking speed limit," said coordinator of AWARE and co-chair of the A-team Eric Alexander.

Campuses can start by keeping their students more informed, said Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Research Center in DeKalb, Ill.

"We need to tell the faculty and staff that what everyone thinks college students are drinking and then doing is not actually what is happening," he said.

Granted, there are as many theories on how to change the college drinking culture as there are experts, but one statement that remains with all of the experts is they want to prevent harm.

Haines went so far as to say he would advocate changing the drinking age to 18.

"I think that the drinking age and laws have been completely ineffective on college campuses. With the undergraduates, everyone parties together, whether you are 18 or 22," he said. "But since 18-to-20-year-olds aren't allowed at bars or school-sanctioned events with alcohol, more students are going to house parties, which are by far the most dangerous places to drink."

At school events, he said, there are health officials, campus police and other people available to monitor alcohol intake and behavior, creating a relatively safe environment for college students. The problem is that 18-to-20-year-olds aren't allowed there and thus have to seek other alcoholic outlets.

Even functions like a proposed back-to-school dance at the University of Wyoming closing off downtown Laramie and opening the bars onto the streets are a little safer than house parties, but such functions wreak havoc on the police, said Fred Homer, Laramie vice mayor and political science professor at the university.

Homer has been in avid opposition to city drinking festivals, such as back-to-school and Halloween dances.

"It is not that I am opposed to drinking," he said, "nor am I opposed to college drinking, simply that functions such as the back-to-school street dance are designed to take place at the beginning of the year, and they target all college students."

The problem is not even so much that they target college students, he said, but that they wreak havoc on the job of police officers trying to monitor the bars, the crowds which are spilling onto the streets and also the house parties which are taking place throughout the town.

He said house parties move, and police will never be able to control them all, because with every party police break-up, another appears down the street.

" Parties have feet," Homer said. "They are constantly moving and shifting, so the police are forced to try and crack down on them and also try and prevent underage drinkers and drunk drivers at the dance downtown. It's a police nightmare."

Both Haines and Homer believe that there are no ways to fix underage drinking, and both advocate having situations where there is the least amount of danger to the students and the rest of the town.

"We aren't ever going to prevent underage college students from drinking. Attempts to regulate and ticket have been ineffective and useless, so I don't think the focus should be on punishment and law enforcement. Rather it should be on what will cause the least amount of harm," Haines said.

Changing the environment is what Habenreiser said she sees as the most immediate way to prevent harm. "We need to try and change the accessibility of some of the drinks. I still think there can be two-for-one nights, but it is the 25-cent well drinks from nine to close of the cheap stuff that causes problems. This type of thing is typical because college students are such a huge market," she said.

She also said she thinks themed nights such as "women get lei-ed," advertising free drinks for women all night and a Hawaiian Lei at the door, contribute to binge drinking and is a perfect set-up for potential harm.

University of Wyoming senior Steven Theriault doesn't know of any real solution to college drinking, and it's ingrained in our culture.

"In all reality, there is no way to prevent college students from drinking," he said. "One possible solution is to drop the drinking age to 18, so there will be a more controlled environment for students, and will make us more apt to drink at sanctioned events where there are people to monitor intake."