Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. Ninety-nine bottles of beer. You take one down, pass it around. Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.

You have probably sung it on a school bus or had it stuck in your head for hours on end. While harmless, this song does not exactly outline behavior that is appropriate for the grade schoolers singing it. In fact, those acting out the song would not be engaging in casual drinking — unless more than 20 large guys are sharing those beers, the people involved are binge drinking.

Though definitions vary, the most widely accepted definition of binge drinking is the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting by men, and the consumption of four or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting by women. Toben Nelson, assistant professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, said the term binge was first used to describe this dangerous behavior in the 1970s by the study Monitoring the Future. Nelson has also conducted research for the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Each time research is conducted there are different students, but the results remain fairly consistent,” Nelson said.

The College Alcohol Study, which has been conducting research since the early 1990s, has found through questionnaires administered to 120 colleges nationwide that around 42 to 44 percent of four-year college students had engaged in binge drinking at least once in the two-week time span before they answered the questionnaire.

These numbers may not seem surprisingly high. In fact, to some, they might seem low considering all the negative press binge drinking has been getting and all the concern it has been causing. This can partially be attributed to the many studies that have been published on its effects, but those who engage in binge drinking often draw enough press on their own without the studies.

While not everyone who binge drinks causes a huge scene, contracts an STD, passes out, becomes a victim of crime, falls behind in class, assaults another person or becomes a fatality in a car accident, the probability of many of these occurrences can be significantly raised as a result of binge drinking. And it can affect others who don’t have the infamous red cups in their hands.

With binge drinking having serious consequences, why do it?

Joyce Wolburg, associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Communication and author of “The ‘Risky Business’ of Binge Drinking among College Students,” proposed an explanation. According to Wolburg, if students engaging in binge drinking have a designated driver or a friend who will stay sober to make sure they don’t do anything stupid, the message is loud and clear: you don’t have to be responsible for yourself, and losing control is all right. If anything goes wrong, it is simple to blame the sober one for letting it happen, Wolburg said.

While students are surrounded by stories of when situations did not work out, using scare tactics is often not successful. According to Wolburg, there is more than a physical dimension to binge drinking.

“Alcohol is a social ritual,” Wolburg said. “It provides a sense of community between those involved.”

With the acceptance of binge consumption of alcohol among many, binge drinking communities are occasionally created.

How does one break a community? By words? By force? By discrimination? Can it be by law?

Many involved in alcohol studies, including Nelson, are under the impression that law has less to do with binge drinking than factors such as the pricing and marketing of alcohol on campuses. This is why some schools can have up to 80 percent of its student body engaged in binge drinking on a regular basis, whereas others have hardly any.

According to Erin Lazzar, assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs and coordinator of AlcoholEdu, Marquette students use alcohol more than students from other schools who use AlcoholEdu.

Lazzar said the program has been beneficial to the Marquette community by “raising the level of education of all of our students about alcohol and its effect on people’s body, mind (and) academics.” The evidence suggests, however, that the simple availability of information deploring a community’s values is not enough to help break up binge drinking.

The binging nation is powerful — it causes much destruction to neighboring communities, and its weapons cannot be confiscated.