Smashed. Bombed. Wasted. Blown out. They all mean pretty much the same thing - drunk.

College campuses look similar on weekends. There are the herds of freshmen roaming the city, looking for a party. You’ll have your frat guys in a sport utility vehicle, toting kegs back to their houses. And there’s the pre-drinkers, claiming to know Aerosmith, trying to con their way into a bar with a fake ID.

Notice a pattern?

College students have a reputation of drinking more than half the average population in America, and it’s really no surprise why.

There are many college students who are completely responsible about drinking. They only have a few, usually with a meal or something to eat beforehand, and pace themselves so that each drink is processed by their systems before bringing down the next one.

But they don’t yield the best stories, unlike the fine young citizens profiled here:

l Someone once told me a story about when a friend of hers, who while intoxicated, got separated from a group of friends on the way home from a party. Assuming he was somewhere he wanted to be or so lost that they simply couldn’t find him, they went home.

They later found him when they called to order some pizza. It turned out the kid had wandered into the restaurant and began answering phones when the manager wasn’t looking. Along with the pizza, a very irate manager demanded that they pick their friend up too.

l Those who pay attention probably saw this in the police briefs awhile ago. It seems that there was one young drunken gentleman who was arrested for indecent exposure. However, it wasn’t so much that he was harassing other people, but instead he was caught while trying to urinate on a “moving squirrel.”

As anyone who’s seen a squirrel running around knows, they’re quick and erratic. Which can only mean that he had to have been chasing the squirrel, and making quite a mess. Luckily, he never caught the squirrel.

l Spring break produces a migration of drunken college students from all over the nation to places where one can find warm sun, warm beaches and public nudity. So I’m told.

In any case, one particular spring breaker related the tale of how she - horror of horrors - nearly dropped her beer while standing on the balcony of a hotel room in Panama City or Canc?n, or some other place that is much warmer than any place ever needs to be.

Well, despite a daring and heroic rescue of the beer can, the poor girl lost her footing and plummeted to her doom. Or at least, would have, if not for the air conditioner that broke her fall. (Not to worry, she is quite well and I understand she leaves the beer cans to fend for themselves now.)

It’s part of the general knowledge base of most college students that alcohol is often the main ingredient in things such as tattoos, expensive online toy purchases and impromptu careers in the pizza business. But there’s not a weekend that goes by where you can’t find a drunken college student.

Drinking makes people do stupid things. Sometimes it’s something mild like urinating in public - on lawns, in fountains or on squirrels - and sometimes there are the tragic events that deserve much more careful treatment than found in this column.

I think a lot of problems would be solved if people just drank less, or at least in moderation. Sure, we all need a hobby. But, “seeing double does not a good hobby make,” a wise man once told me. At least, I think that’s what he said. He had been drinking a little and his words were slurring.

Students would drink more responsibly if they saw how dumb they looked while chugging down a bottle of flat, warm beer. It would save a good number of people a whole lot of embarrassment.

And I’m sure the squirrels would appreciate it.

Chris Boyer is the State News opinion writer. His columns usually appears Mondays. Reach him at boyerchr@msu.edu.