Alcohol policy must catch up
USD should follow lead of SDSU, UCSD in implementing school-wide amnesty policy
Eric Boose / Opinion Editor / The USD Vista
On Nov. 8, 19-year-old San Diego State University (SDSU) student Dylan Hernandez died as a result of injuries he sustained falling from the top bunk of his bed. According to SDSU campus police, Hernandez had returned to his room with a blood-alcohol content of 0.23 percent — almost three times the legal limit — following a fraternity party the night before.
Immediately following Hernandez’s death, SDSU suspended all 14 of the fraternities on its campus, and launched a pair of task forces to “evaluate student activities and safety practices around alcohol and substance misuse,” according to 10News San Diego. On Jan. 25, SDSU acted on the advice of those task forces by creating new rules and regulations for fraternities and sororities about recruitment and new-member education, increasing transparency surrounding the judicial status of campus organizations, and most importantly instituting a “Good Samaritan” policy.
In a letter to students, SDSU explained, “the Good Samaritan Policy is in place to ease concerns or any reason for hesitation that members of Recognized Student Organizations (RSOs) may have in seeking help for others should an emergency or crisis arise.”
The letter goes on to detail how the policy works, stating, “if a Recognized Student Organization seeks appropriate emergency personnel response and reports the incident to the University via the Office of Student Life & Leadership at the time of the incident, the University will not assign formal disciplinary sanctions to the reporting Recognized Student Organization(s) for violations of the alcohol or drug policies (of the Student Organization Code of Conduct), which took place during or immediately before the time of the incident.”
In essence, members of RSOs, like fraternities or sororities, can (and should) get help for someone in need without worrying about getting in trouble. The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has a similar policy in place — the Medical Amnesty Program. That leaves the University of San Diego as the only one of the three big San Diego colleges which does not publicly have such a policy. These policies are crucial steps in a positive direction, but they should bring up a greater point: whether universities should prioritize the safety of their students or enforcing their alcohol policies.
It would not be unreasonable for university administrators to feel trapped by a dual mandate — upholding drug and alcohol laws and policies while also keeping students safe. Clearly, a Good Samaritan policy largely fails the first half of that mandate, letting violations of the law and/or university policy slide in order to keep students safe. Ultimately, that trade-off is one that universities should be making. Drinking in college is so ingrained in American culture that preventing underage drinking will take far more than just laws and policies. In a 2014 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie writes that, “Drinking is so central to students’ expectations of college that they will fight for what they see as a basic right. After Syracuse University … tried to limit a large outdoor gathering, outraged students labeled the campus a police state.” Plainly, if a university could control students’ drinking through some sort of policy, they would have done so by now. At the same time, the amnesty programs at both SDSU and UCSD are nowhere near simply turning a blind eye. Both programs explicitly mention the possibility (and in UCSD’s case, necessity) of documentation and meetings with university staff. With that understanding, the best thing universities can do is institute policies which will help keep students safe.
The dangers of drinking in college are well documented. McMurtrie states that over 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related causes each year, and approximately 600,000 more are injured while drunk. She also notes that every year since around 1994, about 40% of the nation’s college students engaged in binge drinking — one of the most dangerous drinking behaviors.
There is no point trying to pretend that no USD students partake in typical collegiate drinking behaviors. While binge drinking and underage drinking may not be as prevalent at USD as at larger schools, it is still a college, and we do have social fraternities and sororities — the organizations which are most historically associated with drinking. Again, USD’s Fraternity and Sorority Life is not as troubled as SDSU’s, but that is not a reason to forego any sort of amnesty policy. Frankly, any university where students have an opportunity to drink in a potentially dangerous manner should have some policy in place to promote students’ safety.
Other universities across the country have seen the effectiveness of Good Samaritan-type amnesty policies. Cornell University implemented a medical amnesty policy in 2002, a policy used as a case study four years later. That study found that in the years after the amnesty policy was announced, more students called for assistance for alcohol-related emergencies and fewer students said they would not call emergency services for fear of disciplinary action. The percentage of students who visited Cornell’s health center for a “brief psycho-educational intervention” following an alcohol-related emergency jumped from 22% to 52%. Most importantly, Cornell’s success seems to be the general rule, not an exception.
At the end of the day, universities will have to confront a frustrating truth: barring a seismic shift in American culture, college students are going to drink in ways that are dangerous and sometimes illegal, regardless of university policies. Faced with that reality, the best thing schools can do is take steps to encourage student safety around alcohol. A Good Samaritan-type amnesty policy is one of the most tried and tested methods of doing so. It encourages students to seek medical attention when necessary, while still maintaining some sort of accountability. At San Diego State, it took the death of a student to get a Good Samaritan policy implemented. That cannot be allowed to happen here. USD should be actively designing a similar policy to implement as soon as possible.