RALEIGH - Need proof that college students drink to excess? The two top sellers this week at Sam's Quik Stop, a convenience store near the Duke University campus, are cases of Busch Light and ping-pong balls.

Beer needs no explanation. The ping-pong balls are a core element of beer pong, a popular college drinking game that involves the bouncing of a ball and the chugging of a cup of beer.

"We're going to have to start buying them in gross or manufacturing them ourselves or something," said Mikey Hayes, a clerk at Sam's.

At Duke, President Richard Brodhead has joined an initiative by college presidents to urge a national discussion on the potential lowering of the legal drinking age as a way to combat binge drinking. Duke is the sole North Carolina university to commit to the initiative thus far, though its emergence is spurring others, including the UNC system, to consider it as well.

Across the Triangle this week, students are meeting roommates, buying books and rekindling friendships over pitchers and shots. Many are underage, drinking in the privacy of a dorm room or shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of others at welcome-back fraternity parties.

Advocates for a lower drinking age say the current law has led students to "dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking," and suggest a lower age may quell extreme behavior. Others, such as Hayes, the Quik Stop employee, think it's a dangerous idea.

"I don't think they realize what they're getting themselves into having a bunch of drunk children on campus," he said. "I just think they'll have more people binge drinking by making it legitimate."

Social cultures and drinking habits vary from campus to campus, but alcohol is a common denominator. Near the N.C. Central University campus, cars this week were dotted with splashy full-color fliers advertising a back-to-school bash where stretch limousines provide the transportation and ladies drink for free.

A couple of miles away in Durham, bars lining Main Street entice thirsty Duke students with 32-ounce cups of cheap domestic swill and drink specials like the Irish Car Bomb and shots of Southern Comfort dashed with lime juice.

And in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, neon beer signs glow invitingly from the windows of dozens of bars just steps from the UNC-CH and N.C. State campuses.

At NCCU, a big night out for most students includes some casual drinking in an off-campus apartment before heading off to dance in a club, said Jon Smith, 24, a senior.

It isn't the guzzle-Jack-Daniels-from-the-bottle Animal House scene, perhaps because the historically black institution doesn't have as strong an on-campus fraternity presence as larger universities like UNC-CH, he said. And NCCU students share a sense of community and responsibility, even when partying, he added.

"If I'm around my friends and I have too much, they stop me because they don't want to have to take care of me for the next three hours," Smith said.

The Amethyst Initiative -- as the lower-drinking-age project is dubbed -- doesn't specifically target a drop to age 18, but many students say that's the proper age. After all, they say, that's the age at which American youngsters can go off to war.

"If you have to register for the draft, you're old enough to drink," said Joshua Phthisic, 18, an N.C. State freshman from Perquimans County. "If you can be asked to die for your country, you should be allowed to decide whether to drink, too."

But Phthisic and others conceded that some of the attraction of underage drinking is the simple fact that it isn't allowed.

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