"In the past it's very rare to have students being taken to the hospital," said Wayne Fujishige, director of UH auxiliary enterprises, which includes campus security.

"Of the eight taken to the hospital four were drinking off campus," he told a group of parents at an evening meeting this week.

UH reported the 2003 crime statistics under the federal Jeanne Clery Act, which requires all institutions receiving federal financial aid to disclose information about crime on or near their campuses. UH said the statistics will be posted online this month.

The liquor-law violations include breaking dorm rules. Those rules match state law in prohibiting students under 21 from possessing or consuming alcoholic beverages.

In other crimes last year, UH reports:

• Seven forcible sex offenses, the same number as a year earlier;

• A rise in burglary from 98 to 128 cases;

• A drop in car theft from 19 to 8 incidents;

• A dip in drug violations from 71 to 46.

A series of burglaries of chemicals and equipment from science labs stopped abruptly after campus security personnel apprehended a suspect in December.

But it is the rising number of alcohol incidents that concerns a newly formed UH parent group, Friends of "M" Town, and the 2-year-old Hawai'i Partnership to Prevent Underage Drinking.

The partnership says it encountered some resistance from the university, although that's changing.

"We have not seen evidence of (UH) doing anything," said Joy Bounds, a member of the coalition from MADD — Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "But we hope to see progress in the future. There's an incident related to alcohol every weekend."

Rowdy behavior

UH-Manoa administrators Ron Cambra and Neal Smatresk have been working with HPD, MADD and campus security "in looking for ways to more carefully monitor the activities (at the dorms) especially on weekends," said Manoa spokesman Jim Manke.

Both Cambra and Smatresk were at the dorms the past two weekend evenings "to get a handle on things," Manke said.

Interim housing director Margit Watts is also looking at getting tougher on alcohol violations, which she believes should be dealt with by her office, not the dean of students.

"They get slapped on the hand for being caught with alcohol," she said. "If we think these people are endangering themselves or others in our community, they don't get to live here. You have to send a message it's not going to be tolerated."

The daily incident log kept in the campus security office has been showing a pattern of rowdy weekend behavior this semester, particularly at the Wainani dorm apartments that generally have older students who may no longer be underage.

Numerous notations show how drinking often occurs in dorm parking lots, leads to fights, and was at the heart of an incident in which a shopping cart was tossed off a 14th-floor balcony by a visitor. One student was even caught with a keg in his room.

While heavy drinking is commonplace on many college campuses across the country, it's of particular concern at Manoa, where a student died two years ago after drinking heavily and taking methadone.

The death of Jake Elmore in 2002 prompted UH officials to re-evaluate their policies and counseling options regarding alcohol and drug use. It even temporarily led to late-night events with free food in the athletic complex to offer an alternative. Those activities have ended, Manke said.

At the time, UH's only drug counselor increased the amount of counseling, but he has since left the university and not been replaced. Alcohol counseling now falls to student resident advisers in the dorms.

Manke said while the number of incidents in the 2004 calendar year appear lower than last, policies in place at the dorms — especially in the four freshmen "wellness" towers where alcohol is prohibited — are being enforced much more strictly.

"There are no new guidelines. They're just paying more attention to them."

Paying a price

Eighteen-year-old freshman Sean Ganhinhin can attest to that. The Mokihana dorm resident said he was stopped recently by a dorm resident adviser for bringing what he described as a half a glass of beer into his room — an infraction that brought a $25 fine, 20 hours of community service, dorm probation for four years, and mandatory attendance at a drug/alcohol response training class.

"I feel I'm getting baby-sat," Ganhinhin said. "They're way too strict. I was doing my own thing and not harming anyone else. I had more freedom at home. I've been to about 20 different colleges (that older friends attend) and I've never seen any punishments as strict as this. They don't fit the crime."

Nonetheless, some parents feel there are too few consequences when students break rules.

"The consequences aren't there for the kids who get out of hand," said Penny Ontai, who has a daughter at the university who chose not to live in a dorm because of concerns about safety and upkeep.

Fujishige, the UH director, said even when students are cited for liquor or drug violations in the dorms, the disciplinary procedure is ponderous. He said one student caught smoking marijuana in the dorms over the summer, and who signed a confession, is still living there. There is no automatic expulsion.

Some of the problems Fujishige and the coalition see include:

• The mixing of younger students with older ones who may be drinking legally;

• Overlapping jurisdictions on the Manoa campus that muddy responsibilities;

• Legal and privacy issues involving whether police can go into dorm rooms for violations of law;

• The limited powers of UH security officers.

Additionally, the dorms have few controls on entry.

On the issue of safety, Bounds said the coalition has talked about issuing "smart" ID cards to students for dorm entry; screening outsiders by installing closed circuit TVs at entryways; and increasing security staff so female students feel safe during evening hours.

Questionable problem

Fujishige is hoping the Legislature will pay for a $3.2 million package he's proposing to install alarm systems and change locks throughout the campus, as well as installing video surveillance cameras in the dorms.

Student opinions, meanwhile, range widely on whether UH has a serious drinking problem that affects their well-being. Thomas Frazier, a 22-year-old transfer student from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said UH doesn't even compare to his home school with its line of fraternity houses. Nationally campuses with fraternities are considered more at risk for incidents of underage drinking.

"Personally I don't think it's bad," said Frazier of underage drinking at UH. "Once in a while I see drunk kids coming back from clubs but it's pretty much impossible to tame. It's part of the college experience."

Freshmen Carissa Daniels, Mark Chaplin and Chloe Kubo also don't feel drinking problems are that bad, especially in the four freshmen tower dorms where they live. "It's not an issue," Kubo said.

But Matt Lutey, an 18-year-old freshman, said that sometimes the noise from the courtyard is so loud he can't sleep. "Even without the drinking, there's still enough noise to keep me up," he said.

Nationwide, binge drinking on college campuses has been epidemic since the early 1990s and the most recent studies show there has been no abatement in the past decade. According to the latest 2001 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, 44 percent of the total number of students were binge drinkers, defined as consuming five drinks in a row in the past two weeks.

The latest survey also showed that the number of frequent binge drinkers — those who consume five or more drinks in a row three or more times in the past two weeks — is rising. It has gone from 19 percent of the college population in 1993 to 22 percent in 2001.

Parent Fujimoto said she didn't realize the extent of campus problems, especially safety concerns revolving around drinking, until she became involved with the parent group.

"Since we've been hearing how serious the problem is, we've pretty much agreed to want to see the campus as a 'dry' campus," Fujimoto said. "The coalition has said that, too, and they're saying they're not getting very much cooperation from UH."

Dr. Theresa Wee, head of the parents' group, said the coalition "is willing to put for free an increased police presence, and the UH is sort of like 'no, no, it's not a problem.' "

Fun without beer

The parent group has now involved state Rep. Guy Ontai, R-37th (Mililani, Waipi'o), who is looking into how serious the problems are at Manoa.

"I'm on the side of being in the preventive business rather than finding out later we had a huge problem," he said. Ontai, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, remembers a case there a decade ago when a student "basically drank himself to death."

But he's not sure whether tougher rules and "dry" dorms are the way to go.

"One way the kids learn responsibility is not necessarily by more rules but by living the life and realizing what's smart," he said. "And sometimes they make mistakes. Hopefully they don't kill themselves with those mistakes."

One campus security officer said a big part of the issue is trying to convince young people they can have fun without being drunk.

For three weekends at the beginning of the year, an HPD officer backed up the campus security force during the two nights of the week when most trouble occurs, offering added authority that did help quell problems.

But the HPD backup was temporary, an experimental effort, and there are no plans for more.