For Larry Rochau, freshman in computer science, alcohol has been part of life from a young age.

“I started drinking the summer before my seventh-grade year,” Rochau said. “First time we ever partied, we got our hands on some beer and a homemade jug of wine. It was a great time.”

Rochau’s early start on alcohol use didn’t turn him off of it. He drank all through high school, often with his parents, and still drinks today.

“I probably drink about three times a week these days, depending on the week,” he said.

And when Rochau drinks, he drinks a lot.

“I really never keep track, but I know it’s quite a bit,” he said. Rochau estimated he usually has at least 10 drinks but often many more.

The main reason for drinking is just to hang out with friends, he said.

“I drink to enjoy myself and to socialize,” he said. “What else are you going to do on the weekends?”

Even with intense press coverage of binge drinking on college campuses throughout the country, Rochau laughed at the idea that five drinks in a sitting for a male or four drinks for a female, the standard for defining binge drinking, is a problem.

“Jesus, five drinks is nothing,” he said. “You shouldn’t be driving around, but five drinks when you’re just sitting there is just the beginning of the night. I’d say I drink too much when I do stuff I wouldn’t normally do and when I act irresponsible.”

Many experts on alcohol seem to be agreeing more with the sentiment that a drinking problem should be defined by the consequences it creates, not the amount of alcohol consumed. The focus of counseling and substance prevention is changing from trying to set levels and standards of what is dangerous to identifying problems caused by behaviors.

Jeanne Burkhart, substance abuse services counselor at Student Counseling, said by the standard definition of four drinks per woman and five drinks per man, most of the alcohol users she deals with are binge drinkers.

Burkhart said the increasingly popular practice is to define drinking in terms of what problems it causes, not how much is consumed.

“That term [binge drinking] is being used less now,” she said. “The preferable term is problematic or dangerous drinking.”

Burkhart said problematic drinking is alcohol consumption that causes problems for alcohol users, such as poor decision making, unprotected sex and drunk driving.

Counseling now focuses on intentions for drinking, she said.

“If they’re drinking to deal with emotional problems or because they are physically addicted to it, that is a warning sign,” Burkhart said.

Chuck Cychosz, manager of crime prevention, research and training at the Department of Public Safety, said understanding the consequences of drinking alcohol should be the main emphasis of corralling the campus drinking problem.

“The reason we get concerned is because people are getting hurt. It’s the car crashes, the assaults and the addictions that bother us,” he said. “It’s not some sort of moral position about alcohol being right or wrong.”

The solution to the alcohol problem at ISU is to get students involved in confronting their peers about the problems drinking is causing in their lives, Cychosz said.

“Part of this is giving the students the tools to make this a place they want to live,” he said. “We want to help people who want to be reasonable. People who say, ‘I don’t want to get woken up by drunks late at night, I don’t want to get run over by a drunk driver when I am coming home from the library.’ Students are very much part of the solution — it’s not something we do to them or for them.”

A lack of recognition of drinking consequences makes education the main focus in the university’s efforts to curb drinking.

Dave Hayden, student activities specialist, works with students to help them battle the alcohol problem on the ISU campus.

“Alcohol is the greatest concern we have at Iowa State University,” he said. “To help improve that situation, I train students to be experts on the topic and go out to classrooms, living units and clubs and organizations to talk to students about the possible consequences of alcohol use.”

Hayden said using students to educate other students is very effective.

“There’s been research done on that,” he said. “With a topic like this, the students are more apt to be influenced by another student than an administrator.”

Angie Chipman, student security supervisor for the Richardson Court Association, often is the first responder in cases where a residence hall student has become a problem due to heavy alcohol consumption.

“When handled in a mature fashion, alcohol is fine,” she said. “However, it is rarely handled in a mature fashion. Most people we at security deal with have drank to the point where they are out of control.”

Chipman said in her three years working as a security guard, she has seen countless cases of alcohol-related violence and alcohol poisoning. She has been involved in three hospitalizations for poisoning, although several other severe incidents required victims to be transported to the emergency room by friends.

The worst case Chipman ever dealt with was a Larch Hall resident last year who drank nearly to the point of death. He had a blood-alcohol level in the .300 area, she said.

“That’s just unbelievable — the guy should have been dead,” Chipman said. “It’s just amazing that people do that to themselves.”

Hayden said binge drinking is an ongoing problem the university definitely needs to address.

“It’s not necessarily getting worse, but there’s been so much intense media attention so people are becoming more aware,” he said. “There’s always been alcohol, and there are always going to be problem drinkers. I do think that we can get to a better place, though.”

Cychosz said there is steady progress in “the right direction.”

“We’re seeing tension over it, but that can be expected,” he said. “I truly believe Iowa State students usually come down on the right side of this thing.”