I have a date field, which has data like 3/31/2011 12:00:00.000 AM, and i need to strip the time off and just get the date. I would like to have it in a query and need to know if i can do this without using datepart.

Use the convert function e.g.
select convert(date,getdate())
select convert(char(10),getdate(),101)

Use

select convert(char(10),'31/03/2011',103)