Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell You

Hamilton College Charter Trustee Barrett Seaman, wrote the recently published book, BINGE: What Your College Student Won't Tell You, after spending more than two years living in college dorms on 12 campuses across the country. In observing student life at colleges that included Hamilton as well as Harvard, Berkeley, Duke and Stanford, Seaman discovered that much had changed since he graduated from Hamilton in 1967.

According to Publishers Weekly, “he finds that today's students are overextended, isolated by technology, drink too much, study too little and engage in sexual experimentation that can lead­in combination with alcohol and other wrong choices­to depression, diseases and even date rape.” Vanessa Bush in Booklist writes, “Seaman's book is not intended as a guide for parents and prospective students to use in choosing a college, but it offers thought-provoking commentary on student affairs, campus discipline, and reward systems for faculty.”

Barrett Seaman reported for Time Magazine from five bureaus in the U.S. and abroad, covering the White House during the Reagan administration and later serving as special projects editor before retiring in 2001. He has been interviewed on numerous radio and TV programs about the book including the Today Show and National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation as well as by print media.

Reviews

"Amid all the talk about what life is like on college campuses, Barrett Seaman has done something very valuable: he actually went out and reported what really is happening. From sex to drugs to studying, he provides a fascinating and reliable report that every parent ought to read carefully."
--Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World they Made

"A lively, thought-provoking, witty, sometimes unsettling look at contemporary undergraduate culture outside the classroom—this book will be widely read and debated on college and university campuses across North America. Binge is an important book written with the insight and passion of a college trustee and the objectivity and eloquence of a veteran journalist. Seaman’s comprehensive recommendations are logical, sensible, and ambitious. If heeded, they should be a major catalyst for change."
--Eugene M. Tobin, Program Officer for the Liberal Arts Colleges Program at the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation and former president of Hamilton College

"Barrett Seaman gives us an authentic and fascinating view into what really happens to kids when they go away to college. This is an essential book for parents who want to get the inside story."
--Nancy Samalin Founder and Director of Parent Guidance Workshops and author of Loving Without Spoiling