Safety before punishment

Scenario one: Student overdoses in a dorm. Friends immediately seek medical help by calling 911. Student recovers from overdose. Scenario two: Student overdoses in a dorm. Friends freak out, trying to seek help without drawing attention or punishment to themselves. Time lapses. Help comes, or the student is taken to it, too late. Student does not recover from overdose and dies.

These are essentially the two scenarios at the heart of university Sen. Stacia Cosner's "good Samaritan" proposal, which would shield students who seek medical care for friends overdosing on drugs or alcohol from being punished for violating the student code of conduct.

The idea is not a novel one. Similar policies already exist at other universities and colleges. Still, it would be the first such policy at this university, and it wasn't proposed without critics. As reported by The Diamondback's Nathan Cohen yesterday, the proposal "faces some opposition from officials who say students who call for emergency services in such situations are not harshly punished under current rules and that a good Samaritan policy could be abused by students who repeatedly abuse drugs or alcohol."

Although there is some logic behind thinking that a good Samaritan policy would lead to students believing drug use is acceptable or that it would allow students to invoke it as an excuse no matter how often they use drugs or alcohol, that logic is horribly flawed. What is even more flawed is the excuse that penalties are already pretty lenient.

Students who are taking drugs or drinking underage obviously don't think what they are doing is "acceptable" in a legal sense. They are disregarding the fact that it is unacceptable, though presumably with the assumption and desire that they will not get caught. A good Samaritan policy would not make drug-use or drinking underage any less illegal in the eyes of the law, and students would know that.

The good Samaritan policy could be tailored so that it protected students from harsh penalties associated with the student code of conduct without disregarding an individual student's need for help or therapy. While a good Samaritan policy may prevent university officials from tailoring appropriate punishments on a case by case basis, it would not necessarily prevent them from tailoring appropriate helping methods on a case by case basis.

The excuse that penalties are already lenient misses the point. In a situation like scenario two, in which students need to immediately call for help for an overdosing friend don't do so immediately because they are afraid of the consequences, one of the first things out of the frightened friends' mouths could expectedly be, "But what will happen to us?"

Students don't necessarily know what will happen to them if they are involved in a situation like this one. That is the point - and the problem. A case by case approach to these situations may be a great way to address punishments, but it's certainly not helpful in those tense, terrifying moments when students are questioning the best way to deal with an overdosing friend.

Drug use and especially underage drinking occur on every college campus. When everything goes terribly wrong, every second counts, and students shouldn't hesitate for a second to call 911. But they are hesitating, and this policy would be a great way to stop them from doing so.

Scenario three: Students are drunk in a dorm room. One student overdoses. Rather than call 911 immediately, the students convince each other that they should drive off the campus instead to avoid university-related punishments. "University officials will never find out if we leave the campus," they think. Now they are all dead from a drunk driving accident.