11/21/2004

Good Samaritan

Recently there have been many issues of alcohol poisoning. College students drinking too much, passing out on the floor, and others just staring blindly at them. These college students were killed because no one called 911. Others hestitated, making it too late for help. Their friends were underage and did not want to get in trouble.

Is this right? Should a person risk getting a ticket for "minor in possession" for their friends death? Is it right to ticket a person for underage drinking when they are helping save a life? Or does it teach them a lesson as well?

University of Missouri-Columbia has now proposed a "Good Samaritan" policy to help solve this issue. This would excuse any student who reports an alcohol emergency from harsh penalties. Instead this student may be required to take part in alcohol classes.

Is this what should be done for students? Will this increase the number of incidents or will it help save more lives?

2 comments:

pramahaphil said...

While underaged drinking is a problem on college campuses around the country, students shuold not be afraid to do the right thing out of fear for punishment.The problem is American youth grow up with partying as their main concern when they reach college age, and when they finally taste freedom they overdose on it.

Colleges need to end the focus for fun, and put the focus on learning. If this happened such binge drinking would definitely come to an end.

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 for spelling mistakes in Callie's and Kristin's comments.

I think good samaritan laws are a no brainer. There are a lot of issues here about how people rank the possibilities, but the government shouldn't be making that harder.

Biancca has a very good point - similar to the idea that seatbelts cause pedestrian fatalities.

BTW: anyone remember that this is (broadly) what the final episode of Seinfeld was about?

P.S. I was actually in this position in college, and I got a dormmate help without thinking about whether there was a penalty or not. I wonder about the judgement of someone who would even think twice about the existence of a good samaritan law, or lack thereof.