Associated Press

North Dakota campus officials are seeing encouraging signs in the battle to control drinking among college students, though they are not ready to declare victory.

"We are hopeful that we are moving in the right direction," said Karin Walton, director of the North Dakota Higher Education Consortium for Substance Abuse prevention.

Walton said the number of students at 11 state university campuses who said they abstained from drinking alcohol has gone from 31 percent of those surveyed in 1994 to 36 percent in 2006, the most recent year available.

The percentage of students who reported having at least five drinks in one sitting during a two-week period dropped from 55 percent in 2003 to 53 percent in 2006, the survey found. More than 3,700 students were surveyed each time.

Campuses around the state have set up groups to track student drinking and try to prevent alcohol-related deaths.

"What we want to do is decrease the factors that would place students in danger of injury, assault and death - any death we can help to eliminate," Walton said.

Cases that drew attention in North Dakota in recent years include:

In March 2004, authorities said former Minnesota State University Moorhead student Jason Reinhardt, of Fargo, died of acute alcohol poisoning after celebrating his 21st birthday by trying to down 21 drinks in an hour at a Moorhead bar. His death led to an effort in the North Dakota Legislature to stop so-called "power hour" drinking binges in bars.

In October 2003, authorities said alcohol caused the death of Dusten Gailey, a Wyoming student at the University of Mary who was found unconscious in his Bismarck dorm room. Burleigh County Sheriff's Deputy Nick Sevart said the official cause of death is listed as ethanol intoxication, referring to alcohol made from grain.

Alcohol was involved in another student death this year, though it was not the official cause. Authorities said a North Dakota State University student visiting friends in Wahpeton died in May of injuries suffered in a fall down some steps after he had been drinking.

Nationally, an Associated Press analysis of federal records found more than 150 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Campus officials say the effort against alcohol abuse is ongoing.

"I think there's good news in those statistics but there's lots of work to do. We still have very high binge drinking rates as a state," said Laura Oster-Aaland, director of the orientation at NDSU and a co-chairman of state consortium on substance abuse prevention.

"I think the best practice that has emerged is that you've got to do everything. There's not one silver bullet," she said. "Now what we're realizing is that this takes time, resources, dedication."