Free of their parents' grasp, students often arrive at college with their brains stamped with the idea that the next four years will require some heady drinking.

Many consider it a rite of passage, authorities said, while others simply succumb to peer pressure.

Regardless, it's a perennial battle that colleges and universities fight, armed with weapons from required alcohol education classes to alcohol-free events staged at prime partying times.

Police are looking at whether alcohol played a role in the death of Rissa Amen-Reif, 22, of Eden Prairie, who was struck and killed by a car Sunday in Mankato. While the circumstances around her death remain unclear, tragedies at Minnesota colleges clearly linked to alcohol have led many schools to initiate alcohol-free activities.

Amen-Reif had left a sorority semi-formal with her friend and fellow student Corinne Overstake, 21, of Loretto, Minn., when they apparently got lost far from their destination. Amen-Reif apparently fell in the street and was being helped up by Overstake when they were struck at 12:47 a.m.

"We know that there was some alcohol; we don't know to what level," said Mankato Public Safety Director Jerry Huettl, who refused to elaborate. "In many of the incidents that we have had, alcohol has at least been involved in some way, shape or form."

Authorities have not said whether the students had alcohol in their systems or whether alcohol was served at the event. Toxicology results could take at least a week to obtain. Meanwhile, the 17-year-old Mankato boy at the wheel did not appear to have been drinking, authorities have said.

Overstake remained hospitalized in fair condition Tuesday.

Alcohol's allure

Late last month, former MSU prenursing student Amanda Jax died of acute alcohol poisoning after celebrating her 21st birthday in Mankato, highlighting the fact that the allure of alcohol is very much alive on Minnesota's college campuses.

"I've heard many students say they don't even want to drink, but everybody else did, so they went, too," said Chris Braddock, a senior at Minnesota State University, Moorhead. "If students have to choose between drinking with their friends or being alone, they're going to choose drinking with their friends."

Moorhead sophomore Patrick Kycia died in 2005 after drinking and apparently walking into the Red River. Eighteen months earlier, Jason Reinhardt drank himself to death inside a fraternity house while celebrating his 21st birthday.

College campuses across the state spend thousands of dollars every month vying for students' time and sobriety, hoping to dull what one doctor calls the Upper Midwest's "lifestyle" of heavy drinking.

Braddock serves as executive director of his university's Campus Activity Board, which by policy cannot have alcohol at events. He also works with the school's Dragons After Dark group, which stages events one Friday every month from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. specifically to provide alcohol-free alternatives.

The group was launched this year and has held four themed events -- at a cost of about $2,000 each -- with activities including karaoke, bingo, henna tattoos and games. A recent event included a mass pillow fight. They average 400 attendees on a campus of about 7,500 students.

"I think it works," Braddock said. "We're reaching some people."

Making sure there are options

Whether such activities at Moorhead and other campuses are attracting teetotalers and mild drinkers vs. heavy drinkers is unclear. And whether students who show up end their nights elsewhere in the company of clinking glasses and jewel-colored shots is also unclear. But colleges across the state have employed similar tactics for years.