No one disciplines students more often for liquor law violations than West Virginia University.
An analysis of federal statistics finds WVU referred students for disciplinary procedures 2,446 times in 2012, the most recent year data is available. The data compiled by FindTheBest came from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education.
Corey Farris, Dean of Students at WVU, said underage drinking is "obviously a national problem" and one the university takes seriously.
"And, because of that, WVU and Morgantown Police rigorously enforce the liquor laws -– contributing to the higher disciplinary numbers," Farris said.
Farris noted they do have alternative programming, like WVUp All Night, which are alcohol-free events that run Thursday to Saturday night in their student union, and a mandatory alcohol education program.
Despite 2,446 students disciplined in 2012, West Virginia still doesn't see the most students arrested on campus for liquor law violations. That honor goes to the University of Colorado-Boulder, which had 894 arrests, compared to WVU's 799. CU-Boulder also had 1,420 disciplinary referrals for liquor law issues.
The numbers among the Ivy League schools are far lower, yet, maintain a wide disparity among the different universities.
Cornell University leads the way with 338 disciplinary referrals. However, Cornell's arrests are less than one-eighth of how many busts occur at Yale University, while Yale's disciplinary referrals are a measly 55. So what gives?
Kathy Zoner, Cornell chief of police, told The Huffington Post it's a matter of demographics of the campus and the student body. Cornell has about 14,000 undergraduates to Yale's 5,400. Cornell is located in Ithaca, a town with an off campus drinking scene that's much different than New Haven, Conn., where Yale is located.
"We might have a similar total student enrollment," Zoner said, "but the underage drinking is impacted by a higher student undergraduate population. There are whole lot of variables."
The same consideration should be noted for Harvard and Columbia, which both report few arrests, but are located in major metropolitan areas with vibrant drinking cultures. If a Columbia student were to go out drinking in Brooklyn, far away from the uptown campus, and get in trouble with police, the New York Police Department wouldn't care too much about checking whether they young drinker was a student at the Ivy League school.
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