Meet The Binge-Boozing Neighbors

Police normally don't show up at a party armed with a video camera. But in Norman, Okla., they barged right in, capturing the latest complaint of students binging on booze: turning normally quite neighborhoods into party central.

With room and board costs climbing, many parents are finding it cheaper to buy homes for their freshman as a four-year investment. The latest studies show more than 40 percent of American college students are at least occasional binge drinkers -- especially at off-campus parties.

As CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan reports, it's great if you're a student -- but bad if you're a neighbor.

"We're hearing them being referred to as a fraternity house annex, or a sorority house annex," says Jennifer Newell of the Norman Police Department.

Nancy Campbell, who lives just down the street, refers to it as "Greek-Lite."

She routinely finds students "passed out in their yard, lying in their flower beds, one guy was laying out around the street, around the street light pole."

Critics charge campus crackdowns on drinking have only pushed the problem into surrounding communities.

A drunken riot near Iowa State University was blamed in part on overly strict drinking rules that prevented students from drinking on campus during an annual festival.

Still, universities have good reason to ban the booze.

Just since school started, at least five students in four states have died after apparently drinking themselves into a coma - one of the deadliest months on record.

It's a sobering fact that has prompted some schools to request that liquor licenses not be granted to neighborhoods too close to a campus. But that is a pretty tempting market - and a market that continues to grow.

At packed city council meetings all around the country, older residents are telling students to cork it.

"It's not nice to be awakened at 2 or 3 in the morning," says one resident.

Nancy Campbell and her husband Larry will never forget the night students with 12-packs under their arm stumbled into their living room, mistaking it for a party.

"We're in a nice neighborhood, new homes, lot of families, lots of kids," says Nancy Campbell.

And a lot of new neighbors that are sharing their college experience with people who didn't sign up for a hangover at home.