(MONEY Magazine) – They will sit on verdant lawns, your children, speaking of Dylan Thomas, pre- Columbian art, hydrostatic equilibrium and Durkheim's theory of anomie. That may be the college life you dream of giving them and the point of all your sacrifices and saving. Before you get too teary-eyed at the prospect, be warned. College life today may have an ugly side, including drunkenness, acts of bigotry, and crimes ranging from petty theft to rape. Alcohol abuse is so common on campuses that the American College Health Association has declared it one of the most serious health threats facing students today. Racial tension is also a growing problem, with the occurrence of antiblack, anti- Semitic and anti-Asian incidents that range from name-calling to physical assaults; homosexuals are often targets of similar harassment. Another kind of intolerance can crop up in classrooms and on campuses when students and faculty with political agendas are making concerted efforts to color college study with heavy doses of ideology and rules governing the ''politically correct'' way to think and speak. Fortunately, college administrators have recognized the problems, and some have begun to combat them with orientation programs, seminars and counseling. ''We hit on a lot of issues and we hope that something gets through,'' says Dorothy Siegel, executive director of the Campus Violence Prevention Center at Towson State University in Maryland. Siegel and other experts say that the more willing college officials, faculty members and students are to air these unpleasant subjects, the less troubled their campuses seem to be. While you should address these concerns as you search for a college, they probably should not dictate your son's or daughter's decision. After all, most students weather four years at college without ever becoming embroiled in serious disputes or being victimized by violence. On the other hand, you would be wise to face the fact that picking a problem-free college is almost impossible because, in the past few years, practically every kind of school -- big or small, private or public, religious or secular, expensive or bargain-priced -- has suffered at least some kind of divisive controversy, if not an outright scandal. Frank discussions about these hazards will help prepare your kids. And stay in touch once school starts. Frequent phone calls and occasional visits can alert you to problems as they develop. Furthermore, like parents of children of all ages, you should try to pick up on cues -- perhaps a son's mention of some friend's troubles with heavy drinking -- to know when it's time for you to deliver advice. To help prepare you and your kids for today's facts of college life, here's a rundown of the major campus perils.

ALCOHOL ABUSE Last spring, Michael Deliduka, 23, a junior at Indiana State University, was killed while ''elevator surfing.'' That's a new campus fad that has students riding atop elevators and jumping from one to another. Deliduka was asphyxiated when he was trapped between an elevator carriage and the shaft. In the autopsy, he registered a 0.18 blood alcohol content, nearly twice the intoxication level under Indiana law. Of course, alcoholic high-jinks have long been part of the lore and legend of campus life, as has the occasional tragedy. But in the past few years, college administrators and police have become more alarmed about heavy student drinking -- and the role it plays in other problems. ''Alcohol is the lubricant that makes other risks easy and acceptable,'' says Dr. Richard Keeling, director of the Student Health Service at the University of Virginia. ''Students drive intoxicated; they don't use condoms when they have sex, so they are more likely to suffer unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases; they neglect their studies; they become discipline problems.'' The statistics are damning. According to a study conducted by the Campus Violence Prevention Center, 90% of all student-inflicted assaults, murders and rapes involve alcohol. Usually both offender and victim have been drinking. Oddly, studies show overall college alcohol use declining slightly (drug use has dropped off sharply). But many college administrators believe that for those students who do it, the drinking has taken on a grimmer quality: the point is not to unwind, but to get seriously drunk. ''They say that they are going to get 'ripped' or 'blitzed,' and I've learned those expressions are not euphemisms,'' says Carl Wartenburg, the special assistant to the president of Princeton University who is in charge of discouraging alcohol abuse on campus.

Even though most colleges have official rules against underage drinking, many administrators ignore the heavy boozing. Enforcement is nearly impossible, they say, because older students buy liquor for younger ones and fake IDs are easy to get. When shopping for a college, parents should look for efforts by officials to curtail the swilling. Such steps -- often prompted by fears of liability suits by parents whose children have been harmed by drunken behavior -- include bans on alcohol, rules requiring students attending parties to wear wrist bands noting their age, drink tickets to ration consumption, provision of nonalcoholic beverages at university functions, and education and counseling programs.

CRIME Trying to determine a college's crime rate has been almost impossible. Few colleges -- by law, all institutions in Pennsylvania and Delaware and a scattering of other schools -- reported crime statistics. The rest threw a shameful veil of silence over the problem for fear that the hard facts would discourage applications and alumni donations. Howard Clery, a Bryn Mawr, Pa. parent whose 19-year-old daughter Jeanne was raped, sodomized and murdered by another student in her dormitory at Lehigh University in 1986, says that the college administration was so hush-hush about the school's crime problems -- 38 felonies in the previous two years -- that even the board of trustees claimed to be unaware of them. (A spokesman for Lehigh says that the school never tried to keep information about campus crime from students or the public.) The Clerys' lobbying efforts in Washington helped lead to passage of the federal Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990, which went into effect this year. The law requires all colleges to make public the incidence of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and car theft on their campuses. Data collection began in August, but colleges are not required to release any information until September 1992. Parents should query schools about the safety of the campus and the protection provided for dormitories and off-campus housing. Most colleges are stepping up security by providing escort services and installing electronically operated doors in dorms and better lighting on campus.

ACQUAINTANCE RAPE Acquaintance rape is perhaps the most explosive issue on campus today -- and one of the hardest to get a handle on. Statistics are fragmentary, definitions ambiguous. There are no witnesses to say that the woman didn't consent or that the man used force -- which are among the elements that would prove a rape occurred. And there is a growing debate concerning the point at which heavy psychological pressure crosses the line and becomes coercion. Observes Andrea Parrot, co-editor of Acquaintance Rape: The Hidden Crime (John Wiley & Sons, $39.95): ''Many men are taught to believe that when a woman says no, she really means maybe, so they keep going.'' How often does one student rape another? That question is probably unanswerable. On a large campus like Purdue University in Indiana, with 36,000 students, three to five rapes are reported each year. According to sex crimes experts, only a small fraction of victims overall -- perhaps no more than 10% -- complain to authorities. So calculating a total is guesswork. Some schools, including Dartmouth, Michigan State, UCLA and Yale, have held seminars, discussion groups and mock trials, all emphasizing that sex without consent is rape. Many colleges also cover acquaintance rape in their freshman orientations and sponsor rape awareness weeks -- pretty grim events, but important ones. These efforts are positive signs to parents and prospective students that the schools are trying to come to grips with the problem.

RACIAL TENSION Over the past five years, overt bigotry has become more common on college campuses. Some of the incidents are serious crimes -- for example, the vandalizing of a kosher kitchen used by Jewish students at Macalester College in St. Paul. Other acts are vicious -- like the flier that was circulated at the State University of New York at Binghamton after the appointment of a distinguished visiting professor of African-American studies proclaiming that the college was ''to offer a new degree . . . the B.A. in nigger - - - -, designed for the underachiever.'' More often, such acts of intolerance are careless expressions of brutal insensitivity. Says Dawn Fisher, who is a member of the Black Students Union and a senior at the University of Wisconsin at Madison: ''My friends and I experienced a lot of drive-bys -- people yelling 'nigger' out of their cars.'' Some observers say the eruptions of bigotry stem from whites' perception that blacks and other groups have been unfairly favored in admissions and financial aid. ''The new generation regards dealing with the problems of minorities as illegitimate, something that will disadvantage them,'' says Howard J. Ehrlich, research director of the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence. And the young people now in college grew up during a period when voicing racial resentment became increasingly acceptable -- witness popular music groups like Guns N' Roses who sing complaints of Police and niggers get out of my way . . . Immigrants and faggots, they make no sense to me/ They come to our country and think they'll do as they please. ''Put some of these kids in a dormitory and throw them a little liquor and you've got a problem,'' says Alan M. Schwartz, research director for the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Colleges have had difficulty responding to eruptions of hate on campus. Calling in the police is the obvious solution when physical assaults and vandalism occur, but name-calling and hate literature are impossible to eliminate because they are protected under the First Amendment. Today, many ! schools try to encourage understanding by putting students through mini- courses on ''diversity'' and ''multiculturalism,'' which are the current buzzwords for racial understanding and acceptance of non-Western traditions. Michael Gordon, vice chancellor for campus life at Indiana University in Bloomington, describes such efforts as etiquette training. ''In kindergarten, you learn to keep your hands to yourself, to share and to take turns,'' he says. ''Well, now we're trying to teach the stuff you have to know in college -- not to call people names and to be sensitive to their backgrounds.'' In his book Choosing a College (Harper & Row, $7.95), a general guide to picking a school, conservative black economist Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution suggests that minority families check out a school's racial climate carefully before enrolling a child by visiting the campus and talking to students. He also recommends doing a little shopping in nearby stores to see whether minorities are welcomed in the surrounding community. It will quickly become evident, he says, whether racial tension is high.

POLITICALLY CORRECT AGENDAS The debate about the overt politicization of curriculums has been the most publicized recent campus controversy; but as worries go, parents should put it last -- it is already fading. The controversy is over views tagged politically correct, or PC, that are critical of European and American society as racist and sexist. Academics who espouse these views say that it is essential to make students aware of the roles that race and gender play in society, and to acquaint them with the contributions and experiences of non-Europeans and women. The ultimate goal is to teach students to respect cultures and traditions different from their own. That seemingly innocuous notion becomes explosive when PC partisans challenge basic core curriculums, seeking to replace traditional Western Civilization courses with ones that place added emphasis on writings by women and non-Europeans. A thorough perusal of the course catalogue -- or back issues of the student newspaper -- should give you an idea of how much influence the forces of political correctness have. Also, at some schools, students publish their own course guides that frankly assess professors and their offerings. But the tumult may soon subside: students themselves are already declaring PC passe. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kollen Long, who is a recent graduate of Wichita State University, says: ''Tolerant, antiracist feelings cannot be mandated. It may surprise those who would cover students' ears, but young people are able to distinguish and reject worthless, spiteful opinion.'' Amen.