MADISON, Wis.

Officer Brent Plisch drove off to start his shift with the campus police, as all around this college town the planets were aligned for undergraduate excess. It was Friday night of the Labor Day long weekend, the eve of the first football game for the highly ranked Wisconsin Badgers. Classes for the fall semester had yet to begin, so there was no homework to tug at the student conscience for moderation, much less temperance.

Sure enough, half past midnight, Officer Plisch got a call in his cruiser from three other policemen. They had spotted a young woman woozily negotiating a pedestrian bridge between two dorms. When they questioned her, she couldn’t spell her name or remember her address. Her breath test showed a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit.

Staring with both scrutiny and compassion into the woman’s glazed eyes, Officer Plisch and the others considered taking her to a detox center. They elicited her name and address from a dorm friend, so that the next day, when, presumably, the woman would be sober and aware, they could serve her with a summons for under-age drinking.

And there, under the university’s guidelines, the matter would most certainly not end.

A few days later, a dean would be required to review the night’s police log and call in the woman for a discussion. Then, in all likelihood, that dean would telephone the woman’s parents to inform them.