Students are dying to see campus drug policies changed

USA Today has a sobering article on the all-too-high rate of college student deaths. The paper conducted an analysis of 620 deaths of four-year college and university students since Jan. 1, 2000.

It turns out that many of these deaths would have been prevented by sensible campus drug policies. But instead, far too many colleges and universities keep looking for more and more ways to punish students for using alcohol or other drugs, even if the threat of these punishments deters students from taking simple lifesaving steps.

Lynn Gordon Bailey, a student at the University of Colorado, died shortly after the start of his freshman year because his fraternity friends didn't call the paramedics for help in time, out of fear they'd be punished. The call was made the next morning, only after it became clear that he was already dead.

The signs of death were obvious to emergency medical technician Thomas Dunn as he examined Lynn Gordon "Gordie" Bailey's face on Sept. 17, 2004. Answering a 911 call, rescuers found that the college freshman had died the previous night from an alcohol overdose.

...

As he went door-to-door inside the Chi Psi house in Boulder, Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of Northern Colorado and part-time EMT, woke up students to ensure that there were no more victims from the initiation party. When he looked around the house littered with empty bottles, Dunn says, it was his experience as a teacher that spoke to him. "I thought, 'Where did we let these kids down?' " Dunn says. "Very little about that house, from what I saw, had any evidence of scholarly pursuits. ... I was appalled."

As Dunn woke up still-drunken students and told fraternity leaders that Bailey was dead, he watched them go from crying to becoming fearful and silent.

You can listen to the belated 911 call here.

This is just one of several examples mentioned in the USA Today article, and is one of way too many preventable college student deaths each year. Luckily, some schools and state governments are now taking action to save lives.

After Bailey's death, the Colorado Legislature enacted a law that grants immunity to anybody drinking illegally who calls 911 to get help for a drunken friend. Dunn says medics are now getting more calls.

National fraternity leaders are encouraging students to call for help without worrying about getting the fraternity in trouble.

"One of the biggest problems out there is students are afraid to call for help," says Geof Brown, director of alcohol-education initiatives for the North America Interfraternity Conference, which has 5,500 chapters at 800 campuses. "Our groups are taking a more proactive posture these days."

This is one of the reasons SSDP has just launched a new campaign that will help students enact sensible drug policies on their campuses. Colleges and universities aren't going to take action by themselves. Its up to us to make them adopt policies that stop killing students.