David McBride, the director of Student Health Services, said that for some college students the words “Alcohol Task Force” carry a negative connotation.
“Some people, I have discovered, think it’s a dirty word. It’s not a dirty word,” McBride said.
Boston University officials met with students on Thursday in the College of Arts and Sciences to discuss policies on alcohol consumption, in light of National Alcohol Awareness Week.
The meeting, held by Students for Sensible Drug Policy at BU, included representatives from BU’s Alcohol Task Force, Student Health Services, the School of Public Health and BUPD. The SSDP is an international network that aims to reform drug and alcohol policies on campus and throughout the world, according to its website.
The Alcohol Task Force, an organization that formed six years ago, aims to keep members of the BU community safe, McBride said. “Many students do choose to use alcohol in a way that doesn’t resolve in good outcomes.”
McBride said that he has seen an increasing number of students being transported to the hospital over the past couple of years.
“[First-years] are the group who get most frequently transported the hospital, most often within the first couple of weeks of school,” he said.
Though the number of transports is on the rise, McBride said that students need to move past the idea that anyone who is the least bit intoxicated is swept away in an ambulance.
“I hear the word on the street is, if you are the slightest bit intoxicated, you are transported to the hospital,” McBride said. “But it’s not like [the people transported] are blowing a .150. The BAC’s of [those who are transported] are really quite frightening. They’re quite high.”
William DeJong, a professor of public health, said that students have been conditioned by their environment – from movies such as “Animal House” to shot glasses sold in book stores – to believe that heavy drinking is a common pastime in college.
“It’s very easy to believe, coming to campus, that [heavy drinking] is the norm,” McBride said.
BUPD Sergeant Larry Cuzzi said that there’s a stigma among some students that the police are out there trying to spoil their good time.
“We’re out there not to ruin everybody’s night, but to make sure that the rules and regulations and the laws are in compliance and that everybody out there is safe,” Cuzzi said.
“I would say [BU’s alcohol policy] has been pretty effective…but it’s still disheartening to hear stories of students getting taken away in ambulances every weekend,” said Blyss Buitrago, a junior in CAS.
BU students are often involved in heavy drinking, along with fighting, domestic violence and other crimes BUPD encounters, said Captain Robert Molloy.
“Boston University students are involved in a lot of the issues that go on out there,” Molloy said.
Aside from the aid of the Boston police, BUPD and university officials, McBride said that he would like to see more BU students coming together to keep one another safe from those dangers.
“I would love to see students thinking together how to keep one another safe,” McBride said. “How do you as a student community figure out how to keep one another safe?”
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Let me help you out. This is what the American court system says:
Bradshaw v. Rawlings: “Our beginning point is a recognition that the modern American college is not an insurer of the safety of its students. Whatever may have been its responsibility in an earlier era, the authoritarian role of today’s college administrations has been notably diluted in recent decades. Trustees, administrators, and faculties have been required to yield to the expanding rights and privileges of their students.” (US Court of Appeals)
Rabel v. Illinois Wesleyan University, “It would be unrealistic to impose upon a university the additional role of custodian over its adult students and to charge it with the responsibility for assuring their safety and the safety of others. Imposing such a duty of protection would place the university in the position of an insurer of the safety of its students.”
University of Denver v. Whitlock and Beach v. University of Utah, “a custodial, supervisory relationship between a university and its students [i]s inconsistent with modern educational objectives.”
How many times do the people, the government, and the legal system of this country have to direct universities to stay out of the off campus extra curricular lives of their adult students. Students are not employees of the University. They are not children of the University. There is no in loco parentis duty toward someone over the age of 18, and there has not been since ratification of the 26th Amendment. You are not a public health agency. You are not the secret police.
Your job is to deliver an academic education and to take reasonable steps to prevent ON campus violent or property crimes. That is it. If you do anything more than that, everything that happens becomes the school’s responsibility and liability.
It looks like too many people are being transported for alcohol. If the rumor that people that are not in danger of alcohol poisoning are being transported, than why weren’t the numbers of transports and the average BAC quoted? If a lot of people are being transported, who is calling for help? Do you want to change that?