Medical Amnesty: It's Worth a Shot

By Emily Entress

It's a Saturday night and you're all dressed up, coming back from a party on Bellomy Street. You pass a student, clearly intoxicated on the grass by the sidewalk. Do you call for help?

The answer is yes. In any situation, you should call to help a fellow student. Apparently, however, this has not always been the case at Santa Clara.

In an attempt to encourage students to either call for help for themselves or for others in need, the university recently released a Medical Amnesty and Good Samaritan statement.

"The last thing the university wants is for students to feel fearful for getting the help they need," said Kim Gilkey, Assistant Dean for Off-Campus Student Life and Co-Chair of the Medical Amnesty Task Force. "It's really about helping our students feel safe and secure and making sure that when someone is in an inebriated state they are calling for their friend or they are getting the help that they need; it's an automatic reaction."

So exactly what are the perimeters set up around the two year trial period for Medical Amnesty and Good Samaritan?

Medical Amnesty only applies to a student who has not needed previous medical assistance due to alcohol-related intoxication or poisoning. Instead of receiving a $50 fine, community service hours, and a meeting with Office of Student Life for Judicial sanctions, students will instead be enrolled in BASICS, a two hour educational program about the dangers of drinking alcohol. Also, if they are transported to the hospital, their parents will be notified.

The Good Samaritan policy applies to up to two students who are calling on behalf of someone who they believe is sick due to alcohol intoxication. Under Good Sameritan, students can receive amnesty an unlimited amount of times, at least for this trial period. The Good Samaritans will not be faced with judicial consequences, as long as they aren't in violation of any other Student Conduct Codes. Both statements apply to situations either on and off campus.

The movement for a Medical Amnesty and Good Samaritan statement stemmed from a group of EMT's who approached Dr. Alison Bateman, Chair of the Wellness Center and head of the Healthy Campus Committee, in the fall of 2008 to alert her to the need for this type of statement. Rachel Manfre, president of Associated Student Government (ASSG) from 2008-09 started the movement by passing a resolution declaring the need for a statement, but the movement gained momentum with Sean Brachvogel, Director of Santa Clara's EMS program from 2008-09 and ASSG president from 2009-10.

"It's something I've been pretty passionate about since my freshman year." said Brachvogel. "It was pretty normal for an EMT to receive phone calls outside of regular dispatch line from friends who needed help for either themselves or their friends. It put us and the university at a huge liability."

Bateman and Gilkey worked together as Co-Chairs of the newly formed Medical Amnesty Task Force to centralize the support for the movement. The task force put together a preliminary statement in 2009, submitted it to the Office of Student Life, and spent the rest of 2009 doing research and conferring with other student groups.

According to Gilkey, the task force got feedback from 14 different campus constituents, including groups ranging from the Community Facilitators and Faculty Directors to the Santa Clara Police Department.

Although there was plenty of support on campus for Medical Amnesty, it took almost two years for the administration to approve the statement. One of the reasons for this is the slightly controversial nature of Medical Amnesty. Brachvogel said that a lot of the resistance they ran into came from people arguing that universities are propagating the underage alcohol scene by reducing the judicial consequences for students who are drinking.

In response to these claims, Brachvogel found the most compelling evidence about the need for a Medical Amnesty statement related to a few schools, such as Kansas City and MIT, which had recently experienced student deaths related to alcohol abuse. In all of the cases, the administrations responded by turning to more lenient alcohol policies such as Medical Amnesty.

Through the extensive research completed by the Task Force and individuals such as Manfre and Brachvogel, the university came around after the initial resistance and was extremely helpful in making Medical Amnesty a reality.

"Medical Amnesty and Good Samaritan [are] a strong example of how the university administrators are willing to listen to the students and change policies if need be, and hopefully for the better," said Brachvogel.

Still, the administration wanted to make sure they were consistent in promoting their values as a Jesuit institution. "We wanted to stay true to the values and ideals supported by Santa Clara University and to encourage safety while making sure to not give students a 'get out of jail free' card," reiterated Gilkey. "Students who receive Medical Amnesty still have a meeting with a hearing officer, but with a focus on how they can make a better choice next time."

What remains to be seen is whether or not these statements will have an effect on the actions of the students. According to Lauren McGuire, current director of the EMS program on campus, there are signs that the statements are working.

Their statistics show that in the first four weeks of school they have seen a higher frequency of less severe calls.

"It could be a random statistical variance," agreed McGuire, "But it could also be that Medical Amnesty is working and those are the calls that, before the statement, people wouldn't call for because their friend wasn't necessarily so far gone so they were scared to call."

Although the policies were only released on July 1, 2010 and have only been in effect for a few weeks, these trends in the statistics are looking promising for the plan.

"If that trend continues, it looks like the overall number of alcohol calls might be higher percentage wise for the year, but the seriousness of the calls won't necessarily increase. This means that, after Medical Amnesty, kids aren't necessarily drinking more, it's just that those who do need our help are getting it."

Contact Emily Entress at eentress@scu.edu or (408) 554-4546.