The following proposal originally appeared in Time (August 21, 2005). Its author, Barrett Seaman, doesn’t have the space to do much more than alert the general public (or, more likely, parents of college students) to the need for action to end alcohol abuse on campuses. Still, he does offer a surprising suggestion — a trial balloon for dealing with bingeing. Although many readers might reject his idea initially, the proposal does what it must: It makes a plausible case and gets people thinking.

Reading the Genre