ASU’s stigma as a party school is unjustly deserved, said an expert who has dedicated her professional life to studying preventative use of alcohol in college students.

Social sciences Dean Linda Lederman said the majority of ASU students do not binge drink.

A recent study on adolescent rats at the University of Washington suggested that teens who binge on alcohol at an early age have a higher risk of developing brain damage, a finding Lederman said doesn’t surprise her.

“The brain does not finish developing until sometime in the early 20s,” she said. “One reason people are happy the drinking age is higher is because of that concern.”

About two-thirds of students at ASU do not drink in excess, and many of them do not drink at all, Lederman said. This number, she said, is better than many other American universities.

“We are below national norms in terms of how many students drink here,” she said.

Although ASU is below national averages, the department of Wellness and Health Promotion reported that 29 percent of students engage in high-risk behavior involving alcohol.

The more a student drinks, the more likely he or she is to have unwanted consequences, Lederman said. She said she believes many students who drink heavily in college are those who began drinking at an earlier age.

The term Lederman used was “dangerous drinking” — which refers to the amount a student drinks, how often he or she drinks and the consequences of binge drinking.

Liu said he believes the major problem with dangerous drinking on campus is drunk driving and off- and on-campus parties that feed the American culture of binge drinking.

Accounting sophomore Taylor Johns said she knows a lot of drinking goes on at ASU but believes the reason why it is seen as a party school is because it is one of the largest universities in the country.

“There’s a lot of people that aren’t the party type,” she said, adding that it is the few who are that often lead to a misrepresentation of the University as a whole.

Johns said she doesn’t believe the drinking age should be lowered.

“People will drink regardless,” she said. “[They drink] because of peer pressure, trying to impress people, being stressed-out with classes or just getting carried away with their friends.”

Reach the reporter at ndgilber@asu.edu.