While some students woke up after a night of drinking alcohol, other students walked 3.1 miles on Centennial Campus as part of Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s Strides for Change Saturday.

“N.C. State is the central point in Raleigh to target our audience of young adults and college kids,” Lori Brown, a developmental officer of MADD, said.

Underage drinking and drunken driving are the No. 1 problem on campus, according to Jerry Barker, vice chancellor and member of N.C. State’s campus coalition that works with the local MADD chapter.

“[Drinking] has been recognized as a problem almost since colleges have been in existence,” Barker said.

Barker said alcohol is related to a large part of students’ problems, such as accidents, vandalism and sexual assault.

“We want the whole N.C. State community involved to address the issue [of drinking],” Barker said.

Along with Barker, student participants said they thought alcohol was a problem with their peers.

Andrea Weale, a senior in public relations, said she supports MADD.

“I’m just a personal advocate against drunk driving,” Weale said.

Officer R. Potts from Campus Police said drinking is the No. 1 problem on any university campus.

A recent study that Harvard University conducted showed that forty-four percent of college students binge drink, according to Potts. Binge drinking means consuming five or more alcoholic beverages in one sitting.

Potts said Campus Police is starting a program with the Inter-Fraternity Council to bring awareness and understanding of drinking responsibly to students. The program will reward fraternities for behavior that does not violate laws, especially drinking laws.

Potts said he feels fraternities have a big influence on campus, and students will model their behavior after the fraternities.

“The key word is reduce,” Potts said. “If we can reduce one injury or one death, we have accomplished what we wanted.”

The Strides for Change walk brought participation of students from other universities.

Rachel Branch, a junior at University of North Carolina-Wilmington, said she participated in the walk because her friend, Thomas Hues, was killed by a drunken driver in September 2005.

“No one realizes it’s not OK to drive [after drinking] until it’s too late,” Branch said.

Craig Lloyd, executive director of North Carolina’s MADD chapter, said the 1,000 participants in the walk were teams from various organizations, such as law enforcement, schools and churches from across the state.

“It’s a good part of the healing process for the victims,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd said he had a cousin that died from an accident caused by a drunken driver, and his friend in high school committed suicide while under the influence.

“If we knew the cure for cancer, we’d do it,” Lloyd said. “We know the cure for this, and that is not to drink and drive.”

Lloyd said he agreed alcohol is related to many of students’ problems.

“From ages 12-20, kids drink 850 million alcohol beverages per month,” Lloyd said.

Drinking is not only against the law, but also negatively affects brain development, according to Lloyd.

Lloyd said the money the walk generated will go into programs to educate students from kindergarten to high school along with universities.

“We are taking physical steps today to represent steps we are all taking to support MADD’s mission to reduce impaired driving and eliminate fatalities in the hands of drunk driving,” Kimberly Overton, chair of MADD’s state council, said.