Rather than taking a hard line on abstinence from alcohol, colleges are trying campaigns that stress moderation. Funding for the new alcohol policies is coming from beer makers, including Anheuser-Busch, the nation's biggest brewer.

The new concept, called "social-norms marketing," includes the placement of upbeat ads about student drinking behavior in campus newspapers. In addition, messages of moderation are displayed on posters, T-shirts, coffee mugs and screen savers.

To date, Anheuser-Busch has committed nearly $400,000 to the University of Virginia and six other schools for social-norms campaigns. The company also is talking with other schools about sponsoring ads boosting moderation.

"Drinking on campus has been around as long as there have been students, alcohol and college campuses," said Francine Katz, vice president and head of Anheuser-Busch's social-norms effort. "To me, behavior is dictated by what you see as the norm in society. It can be 'put your napkin on your lap,' 'don't talk with your mouth full.'"

Other brewers funding similar efforts are the Miller Brewing Co., which has given $25,000 to Georgetown University to develop a social-norms program, and Adolph Coors Co., which contributed $8,000 to the University of Wyoming to help pay for placards advertising that 'A' students average no more than three drinks when they party, while 'C' students consume as many as five.

School officials must decide, however, whether their partners in addressing campus alcohol abuse should be the companies that make and market the beer and liquor young people use to get drunk. "One always becomes a little concerned if there seems to be strings attached, but there were none," said James Turner, director of the Student Health Department at the University of Virginia. "I likened it to General Motors asking a university to help them come up with new air-bag or seat-belt technology. Of course we'd say yes."

But Richard Keeling, editor of the Journal of American College Health and a former student health director at both the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin, thinks the schools should refuse the financial support from beer makers. He said that social-norms marketing attacks the wrong end of the problem, and he called industry support for it "amazing, but very predictable."

"I don't think the industry is prepared to reduce consumption, which is what is necessary," Keeling said.

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