It's Friday night and John Stockdale and his roommates are watching TV. Each drinks a six-pack before venturing downtown to the Kent bar strip to knock back a few more beers and hang out with friends. Early in the morning, John and his roommates return home and grab a few more drinks before finally dozing off on the living room furniture.

Stockdale, his roommates ­ and almost half of all Kent State students -­ are binge drinkers, and most don't know it. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health, which surveyed 17,000 students at 140 colleges and universities, including Kent State, defines binge drinking as having five drinks in one sitting for men and four drinks for women. A drink can be one 12-ounce can or bottle of beer, a 12-ounce wine cooler, a four-ounce glass of wine, or a 1 1/2-ounce shot of liquor ­ either straight or in a mixed drink.

Many Kent State students interviewed say they were astonished that the amount of liquor defined as binge drinking is so low. In fact, Stockdale says,"Five drinks is just a beginning for us (him and his roommates)."

But campus campus experts say at the five-drink level, people start causing problems for themselves and others ­ missing classes, vandalizing and fighting with friends and roommates. Five drinks also causes a blood alcohol level of .1 in a 170-pound man and a 130-pound woman. That's the legal definition of drunk in DUI cases.

"We didn't realize the effects that come with binge drinking until the studies came out," says Alice Ickes, crime prevention officer for the Kent State Campus Police Department and a member of Kent State's Coalition to Reduce Binge Drinking. "Now we're trying to reduce the problem on campus."

In Kent, students may binge drink on the traditional Thursday night out at a party, in a crowded bar or in the dorms. But Stockdale, a Kent State graduate with a general studies degree, says he and his roommates drink anytime during the week. "It's tradition," Stockdale says. "It's a good way to wind down from school. And it's not fun to go to the bars and not drink.

"It's a bonding experience," Stockdale says. "If I get drunk, I can stay on a friend's couch for the night if things get out of hand. But it's OK, because everything's forgotten in the morning.

"It builds good memories when I think of someone and can say I drank so much with that particular person. And besides, I won't drink like this forever."

Freshman Shaun Lindsey says he sees students in Dunbar Hall drink every weekend. "Some people like getting drunk," he says. "It takes the pressure off from school, it helps them relax ... it's a whole state-of-mind for a lot of people."

"I see people who drink starting on Thursdays and don't finish up until Saturday," says Janelle Kollar, a freshman who lives in Prentice Hall. "They'll chug it all down, then drink more just to say they did it."

Sarah Abrahamowicz, a freshman who also lives in Prentice Hall, says she has three older brothers who drink. "They say drinking gives them the courage to do things they wouldn't do if they weren't drinking," Abrahamowicz says. "That's why most people drink."

Some people think there's no party worth going to unless there's drinking involved, Abrahamowicz adds. "The first thing people say in high school is they can't wait to drink when they get to college," she says.

Sue Foster, former area coordinator for the first-year college experience and a coalition member, calls that an example of "state dependent" learning."On the freshman and sophomore levels, many students learn social skills while under the influence," says Foster, who is now assistant director of student and staff development in Residence Services. "When they try to socialize in a sober state, the same social skills aren't there.

"People used to drink to socialize. Now students drink to get drunk. College students think college is a magical time-out and that what they do in college won't affect them once they get into the work place."

Kollar says some of the attraction of drinking has to do with the rush of breaking the rules. She also says students who give the excuse "everybody's doing it" are mistaken. In fact, the Harvard study reports that 12 percent of Kent State students don't drink at all, and 36 percent have drunk, but do not binge.

Some students say they just grow out of binge drinking. For instance, Suprix Harris, a freshman from Canton, says she was a binge drinker with college-aged friends before she came to Kent State last year. "If I had been by myself, I probably wouldn't have binge drunk," she said. "But I was with my friends, and it was just fun."

But Harris, now 25, says she drinks much less."I started to realize that it is not pretty for a woman to be drunk," she says. "I'm a lot more mature than I was five years ago, and I just don't have the desire anymore."

Nationally, 50 percent of people say drinking made them do something they later regretted, 40 percent say they've forgotten where they were or what they did, 30 percent had unplanned sexual activity and 15 percent have been injured.

Franco, one of Stockdale's four roommates, admits he's a binge drinker (by the Harvard definition). He remembers discovering one morning that his elbow was stuck to his shirt with blood. "I'm not sure how I was injured," Franco says.

Stockdale says it's common for him to forget what happened after a night of drinking. Franco joked about how the two of them used to be able to drink until 3 a.m. and get up the next day at 7 a.m. to go to work. "I basically still can do that," Stockdale says. "This summer I worked 60 hours a week and would drink three or four times a week."

But Franco says he couldn't keep up that routine for very long.

Binge drinking affects more than the drinker himself ­ friends may be placed in uncomfortable situations when excessive alcohol is involved.

Senequa White, a senior from Youngstown who lives in Beall Hall, remembers a weekend night when a friend came home after pizza and mixed drinks. Her friend ended her evening hovered over the toilet. "But she missed," White says. "There was puke all over the floor." White cleaned up the mess and put her friend to bed. "No one else was there to do it," she says.

According to the Harvard study, 50 percent of Kent State students said they've had to baby-sit an intoxicated friend, 54 percent said their sleep or studying was interrupted by a drinker, 22 percent of Kent State students experienced unwanted sexual advances by drinkers, and 19 percent had their property damaged.

Campus security aides deal with binge drinkers every day. Security aide Steve Caffrey says when he worked in the Small Group complex for two semesters, he saw binge drinkers in situations ranging from the routine to the unimaginable. "(Freshmen) were experiencing what they thought were the joys and wonders of alcohol," says Caffrey, who has worked as a security aide for three years.

Caffrey recalled a time when he was on duty and saw a freshman who was lying in a pool of vomit. The woman was unconscious. Once the paramedics came, she woke up, but could not remember her name, what room she lived in or any other information the paramedics needed, he says. "It's kind of sad to see when people binge drink that badly," Caffrey says. "It's sad when someone loses control, but we deal with it all the time."

Caffrey and Chris Beacom, also a security aide for three years, estimated that about 80 percent of their calls between Wednesday and Saturday ­ noise complaints, criminal damage, rescue squad calls and fighting ­ are alcohol-related. They report that they've seen some pretty interesting cases ­ cases even the most creative novelist could not make up.

Caffrey remembers a time when a freshman had come home from a fraternity party and went to bed. Later, he had to use the restroom, so he climbed out of the top bunk of his bed and fell to the ground, snagging his ear on his dresser on the way to the floor. "I came to the guy's room and I saw him holding a white towel to his ear," Caffrey explains. "The towel had turned red from the blood."

The man was holding his ear in his hand.

"He was so drunk he didn't even realize what had happened," Caffrey says.

Ickes, the Kent State Police crime prevention officer, remembers a man who fell out of the window of a fourth-floor building. He had been drinking and wanted to get out of his room to get more to drink. His friends had been blocking his door.

Frequent binge drinking was defined in the Harvard study as binge drinking at least three times during the past two weeks. Stockdale and his roommates say they fit the frequent binge drinking category. But he says the definition of binging and frequent binging both are laughable and negative. "I would consider a binge drinker as someone who doesn't normally drink, but who gets really drunk once in a while," he says.

Scott Dotterer, health educator for the Office of Student Health Promotion, says he doesn't want students to get hung up on the five-drink number. Instead, he says, students should limit drinks to one per hour. The body's system can handle that far more easily than faster drinking, he says.

The Coalition to Reduce Binge Drinking was founded at the beginning of this year, and the group includes faculty, staff and students. Although the coalition readily admits it doesn't have all the answers, it says education is the key.

Dotterer says a main goal is to inform students of the dangers of binge drinking. "We had low attendance at drinking programs in the past, so we're trying something new," Dotterer says. "We challenge students to stop drinking after that four- or five- drink limit."

Foster says many students think there are no medium-term effects of drinking. "Students think they can binge drink on Friday, recover on Saturday and Sunday and take a test on Monday," Foster says. "They think they still have the same critical thinking skills, but they're really under a false assumption. The reality is that recovering those critical thinking skills can take up to 30 days."

The coalition is studying policy alternatives, including requiring white slips for every on-campus liquor violation. White slips send students directly to conduct court, while blue-slip violations handle policy violations within residence halls.

Franco says it will be difficult for the coalition to persuade students to drink less. "We've tried to find other things to do like bowling," says Kevin Casaletta, one of Franco's roommates and a senior radio-TV production major. "But you drink while doing that. Then we tried going to the movies, but what do you do after the movies are over? Even when we find other things to do, we still drink."