We Can Make Medical Amnesty Better

This is my latest revision on this article, printed in The New Hampshire, Friday Oct. 22nd. This column corrects some inaccuracies that plagued my original draft.

Last month, UNH instituted a pilot Medical Amnesty program after months of negotiations between the administration, town of Durham, UNH and Durham police and the Student Senate through its Community Change Chair, Ashley Rennebu. The current Medical Amnesty program protects students from sanctions like eviction and probation and replaces them with a mandatory alcohol education class. Within 2 days after meeting with the Complainant, those written up can go to Conduct and Mediation to fill out a form to request amnesty and potentially avoid sanctions. From there, a judicial officer decides your fate. It is recommended that students arrested off-campus seek legal advice from Student Senate Legal Services Attorney Joanne Stella. A Medical Amnesty policy is a step in the right direction for student safety and directing UNH toward more sane alcohol policies on campus.

That said, UNH's program is far from perfect. It doesn’t apply to student organizations like fraternities and sports teams. Parents must be notified only applies as a campus policy, not a state-wide or town-wide ordinance. This means it only reaches into the UNH conduct system and has no bearing on an arrest record with the police. If help is called, everyone that is intoxicated and underage at the scene will be arrested. The only thing that differs between a dorm and an off-campus apartment is that only the dorm-partiers have the option of amnesty through the Conduct office. The policy is inherently limited.

It doesn’t apply to other illegal drugs besides alcohol. Thanks to state and federal law, and their unwillingness to question it, Durham and UNH police cannot endorse a policy that includes drugs. Without police support for a policy, the application of the program would've been overly complicated and of little use to students. Besides the fact that alcohol is a drug, albeit a legal one, an effective policy would recognize the need to account for other intoxicants and potentially dangerous substances other than alcohol. Many dangerous substances are not included under the amnesty umbrella: drugs that can cause much more harm than alcohol, yet students are not protected.

It’s ironic that cannabis, a relatively benign substance compared to alcohol and other drugs, would not warrant a call for emergency help if consumed to excess. The worst part about cannabis use for students would be that, if it was used in conjunction with alcohol over the course of a night, and help was needed, that student would be exempt from amnesty. The cannabis user now risks much more than the student who chose to only use alcohol, even though they made a safer choice.

The problem of calling for help is all about incentives, and even with the new policy, the incentive to call for help in an emergency is still too weak. The current policy doesn’t achieve sufficient risk reduction in a student's mind to justify making the call over letting the victim sleep it off. We must reduce the barriers to calling for help in order to craft a policy that works. During negotiations, the administration was steadfast in adopting a policy that allowed the victim to invoke amnesty only one time, while callers can request amnesty as many times as they want. By maintaining a strict, “one-strike system,” the University administration has further threatened student safety over petty concerns of punishing over-zealous partiers. An effective policy exempts those who call for help and those you need it from arrest as well as university sanctions and their consequences. The only way to maximize the effectiveness of a Good Samaritan Policy is to minimize the possibility of consequences. This isn’t about letting college kids get away with irresponsible drinking, its about recognizing that students will drink, no matter what the law or school policy says, and adopting a policy that reduces the harms associated with irresponsible drinking. In order to establish a legitimate, working policy, we must fix state law, more specifically, underage intoxication statutes that allow police to arrest every underage person suspected of drinking on the scene. There is no reason to subject a student to an arrest and everything it carries for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need a state-wide Medical Amnesty law. That is the only way that those of us underage can be sure that helping a friend in need will not warrant police harassment.

A Good Samaritan Policy relies on students to take responsibility for the health of their friends and classmates, its time we were given the chance.