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Why isn’t there room for Good Samaritans at BC?

By Gaveliers, The Gavel Media Team, on December 7, 2009 5:58 PM

By Nick Schaufelberger -

Picture this: you’re enjoying a beer with some friends in your dorm room while celebrating after the Eagles beat the Fighting Irish in overtime. But one of your friends drank before he arrived and is now quite intoxicated. He slips, bumps his head on the wall, and ends up with an unsightly gash that starts bleeding profusely. You are worried that he could be seriously hurt and want him to get medical attention, but if you call an ambulance, you will get in trouble for drinking. What do you do?

This is not an implausible scenario; obviously, a large number of students at Boston College drink, and some get sick. This situation comes up at BC all the time. A friend of mine found herself in a very similar situation when an acquaintance hurt his head while drinking. She did seek help, but got in trouble for it. If it were to happen again, she would “do things differently” because she has been “deferred from doing the right thing.” The debate over whether to call an ambulance when a drunk friend is sick or injured is made all the more difficult by the fact that students will think twice before calling; they know they will get in trouble once the ambulance arrives. This is especially important when it comes to alcohol poisoning because, in these cases, it is very difficult to tell whether a person is actually seriously sick or not. If a student is showing signs of alcohol poisoning, it is all too easy for his or her friend to simply dismiss it and hope that they can sleep it off, because they do not want to get in trouble themselves.

This is not the case nationwide, however. Most major colleges and universities have amnesty policies, which exempt “whistle blowing” students from punishment. The idea behind this is that it will encourage students to call for help when it is needed, and thus reduce alcohol-related deaths. This has already shown to be true: a 2006 Cornell study showed that the number of calls for alcohol related assistance more than doubled in a two-year period. Opponents to an amnesty policy claim that it will “encourage drinking in dorms.” This assertion is absurd, and it is not a reason to go without an amnesty policy here at BC.

If an amnesty policy would encourage drinking, wouldn’t “How to Identify Alcohol Poisoning” flyers be promoting alcohol abuse as well? Yet, these posters are taped onto or shoved under almost every dorm room door on campus. Tools given to students to help them deal with potentially life-threatening situations, like an informative flyer with instructions to follow or an emergency number to call, are not what drive students into these situations. Administrators should realize that when students decide to drink, they don’t plan on having to go to the hospital or give a friend CPR. These are accidents. All that not having an amnesty policy does is discourage the calling of help once a student has had too much to drink, effectively making drinking situations all the more dangerous.

In the United States, there exist Good Samaritan laws, which exempt people who aid the injured from being sued. Does this make people behave more dangerously? Of course not. BC, if it truly care about student safety, should take a hint from the U.S. government as well as its peers in the world of higher education and adopt an amnesty policy.