Despite student protest, Boston University administration does not plan to adopt a medical amnesty policy this academic semester, BU officials, said.
Student groups and the Student Union said they remain committed to fighting for the policy reforms.
‘Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ Union President James Sappenfield said. ‘It took years to change the student guest policy. I’m still hopeful that we will see some changes this year.’
The proposal for the medical amnesty policy, which asks the BU administration to implement a policy that will put student health over punishment, was created by 2008-09 Union President Matt Seidel. It cited schools such as Cornell University that have adopted the policy and seen immediate increases in calls, despite the fact that alcohol consumption on campus has remained constant.’
In a March 2009 letter addressed to the student body about the issue, Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore reaffirmed that BU will retain the policy that activities on campus cannot be excused from federal, state or local laws.
BU officials maintained that students should call for emergency services if needed no matter the situation.
‘ ‘If there is any thought in your head that [you] might need to call for medical assistance, you should have already done so, regardless if there are judicial consequences,’ BU spokesman Colin Riley said.
Stacey Fontana, leader of the Union medical amnesty task force, said she is upset the administration is not taking the requests seriously.
‘When I brought the signatures to Dean Elmore last year he said ‘oh you’re getting the word out,” she said. ‘I told him ‘no, we were there to get the policy changed.”
Fontana, a College of Arts and Sciences senior who is also the president of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said the students fighting for the medical amnesty policy collected nearly 2,000 signatures with phone numbers and email addresses advocating for the policy change.
‘College students are selfish,’ she said. ‘They are going to experiment, they are going to make bad decisions, but that doesn’t mean that people have to die in the balance.’
Fontana said she wants BU to adopt a policy that advocates counseling without judicial punishments and apply it to all drugs.
Though she said she remains optimistic and believes that the medical amnesty policy is a central issue to the student body, she realizes the difficulty in getting it passed.
‘This issue is really important to students,’ she said. ‘But, at the same time, there are so many issues out there, like the print quota, that I could see the Student Union pursuing them to accomplish something while in office.’
Sappenfield said he is committed to fighting for every issue that is of importance to the student body. Fontana said students should write letters to Dean Elmore and President Brown in favor of the medical amnesty policy.
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