Project Proposal

For my project, I will be performing research on current medical amnesty policies at the University of Pittsburgh. Medical amnesty policies can apply to many different situations but I will be focusing on policies that pertain to alcohol consumption on our campus. To best describe the use of medical amnesty policies, let’s set up the following scenario.

Two 18-year-old college freshmen, Tom and Jerry, are at a party consuming alcohol. Tom notices that Jerry is showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning that include unresponsiveness, heavy vomiting, and irregular breathing. The safest course of action would be to call 911 and get Jerry the help he needs. Tom, however, does not want to call for help because Jerry, as well as himself, could get in trouble for underage drinking. So Tom decides to just let Jerry work the alcohol out of his system and hope that he will be fine. Clearly, there is an extreme amount of risk being taken here and the choice Tom makes could cost Jerry his life.

Through previous research, I have come to understand that the University of Pittsburgh has recently implemented some medical amnesty policies. If the scenario above were to happen on Pitt’s campus, Tom could call for help and would not be cited for underage drinking. Jerry, on the other hand, would receive the full repercussions associated with an underage drinking citation. The repercussions could include, but are not limited to, fines, alcohol classes, or community service. If Jerry had been in trouble before, Jerry could possibly be looking at expulsion from the University. Tom, who is Jerry’s friend, may still not call for help because he does not want to get his friend in trouble. Through my project, I will be advocating for medical amnesty for both parties so that there is no guilt associated with calling for help.

I have also performed research in closely related, yet applicable, topics that will hopefully have a useful place in my final document. I have researched our drinking age and why it is set the way it is. I have also looked up several sites that have statistics about drinking that will hopefully have a strong impact with my final document. Most importantly, I have found other schools with medical amnesty policies currently in place. By using this information, I can generate a proposal to Pitt officials that has ideas inspired by other schools’ policies.

I believe that this topic is of extreme relevance because I have noticed from personal experience that alcohol consumption is quite widespread on our campus. Alcohol is also consumed by legal and underage students alike thus it seems important to provide proper safety nets for all who partake in alcohol consumption. While it would be ideal to perform some polls to understand what percentage of Pitt students drink alcohol so that a true audience could be defined, it seems impossible to perform large, accurate polls in the short amount of time available. Just by being a part of the Pitt campus community, I hope that readers of my document (mainly undergraduate students) will also be able to draw upon their own experiences and recognize how much alcohol use exists on our campus.

Because my audience will be people my age, my final publication will need to be easy and quick to read. I understand that I will only have a few seconds to capture the attention of my reader so I will need to quickly describe my cause and why action needs to be taken. Perhaps the best way to do this will be to use some shocking statistics that will get the reader thinking. In terms of design, a well-placed and meaningful graphic could also lure my reader into reading the rest of the document. Since my audience is educated, I also do not need to go the other extreme and spoon-feed information to my reader. My goal is to find the right balance of complexity and readability so it is easy to access for my reader without being insulting.

Some may view medical amnesty policies as advocating underage drinking. This will be my most difficult issue to tackle because even I, to an extent, feel this way. I believe that it will be important to present ideas that attempt to change this view and offer solutions that provide the right amount of safety without making it appear that the drinking laws are being compromised. Perhaps one solution that can be proposed is allowing medical amnesty policies only apply once during a student’s undergraduate career. This is a policy that is currently in place at Appalachian State University.

I will be interviewing Shawn Ellies from the University of Pittsburgh Police Department to provide more rounded information on my topic. Because the Pitt police department is usually the first to respond to alcohol emergencies, it will be interesting to get information about how they respond. I will also be looking for information about the exact wording of Pitt’s current polices and the way emergency services would respond to a real alcohol emergency. Lastly, I also want to better understand how policy change is brought about at the University so I can provide the best course of action to my readers.

Through my blog, I have also received the suggestion of interviewing a Carnegie Mellon police officer. It seems to me that more Pitt students know that Carnegie Mellon has medical amnesty policies than know about our own University’s policies. Because they are our neighbors on Oakland and would likely use the same emergency services, perhaps it would be interesting to interview someone there so I could better understand their policy. In addition, this information could be used to build a policy for our campus that would be modeled after their policy.

If my final project is published, I plan to electronically distribute the document. From personal experience, people tend to not read paper handouts and most wind up in the trash. In our modern day of technology, more and more people rely on electronic means of acquiring information. Therefore, distribution by electronic means seems to be the best for financial reasons in addition to the fact that more people will likely take the time to read it. In terms of the final design, I plan on using Microsoft Word. It is a program that I am familiar with and I know how to design documents with the program.

If our policies at Pitt were to change, my audience would need an easy way to get behind my cause. I believe that the simplest, most effective tool to use in a situation like this would be a petition. A petition does not take large amounts of time to sign yet can show the University of Pittsburgh the large amount of students who are in favor of policy changes. There are many websites nowadays that offer online petitions and it would be very easy to include a hyperlink at the end of my document, considering that it would mainly be distributed through electronic means. I hope that by providing credible, accessible information along with an easy proposed action, change can be brought to our policies so that students can be better protected.

New Sources

Doing some further searching, I came across this article from August of 2011. It provides some details pertaining to Pitt's current amnesty policies.

Pitt Changes Alcohol Policy After Amnesty Bill Becomes Law

Our instructor also show me this next document. I think it shows some of general opinions of the University without going into every little detail. This is a document that could be useful to parents and incoming students alike.

Pitt Addresses Safety, Citations, and Underage Drinking

After reading through these documents, it appears that I will be shifting my project so I can advocate medical amnesty polices for the intoxicated student. I believe that even with the current policies (the person calling in the emergency can receive amnesty but not the intoxicated student), some may choose to not call because they don't want to get their friend in trouble. I will need to further develop this argument now but it is good to know that the University is willing to make changes to best suit its students.

Interview Plan

For my project on medical amnesty policies, I would like to interview a Pitt police officer. I believe that a police officer would have a lot to say on the matter because he or she would be one of the first people called in a real emergency. While I have come to understand that there are some amnesty policies in place for the person who calls for help, I would like to find out whether or not there is a desire to provide amnesty to the intoxicated person as well. I feel as though police officers would be most likely to know about the current policies and whether or not changes would be coming in near future. Overall, I am looking to obtain information pertaining to the exact policies of the University as well as possible experiences from the police officer.

Because of the recent bomb threats on Pitt’s campus, there has been overwhelming student support of the Pitt police, something that I have not seen in my three years here. An interview with a Pitt police officer would add, in my opinion, a great deal of ethos to my final project and would get the attention and respect of students on campus. I will request an interview with a Pitt police officer through email and then hopefully meet at the station for a 20-minute interview. With their permission, I would like to record the interview and later transcribe it so all students could read the interview. The benefits of this interview will hopefully be two fold: I can gather more current information on my topic and I can increase the credibility of my argument.

Potential Questions for Interviewing

Currently, what policies are in place to provide amnesty for underage students who go for medical treatment due to alcohol poisoning?

 In a scenario where a legal drinker calls for help for an underage drinking, what (if any) disciplinary actions are taken? Is there usually an investigation as to whether or not the legal drinker provided the alcohol?

When a student receives a citation for underage drinking (not possession), what does the student need to do? Will it eventually be expunged?

Are medical amnesty laws for the intoxicated person something that the University is considering or has considered implementing in the past?

In your opinion, would medical amnesty laws provide students more safety or would they subtly promote underage drinking?

What alcohol awareness programs are currently run on Pitt’s campus?

Media Scan: Medical Amnesty Policies

            For my project, I am considering doing research on current medical amnesty policies. Medical amnesty policies can apply to many different situations but I would like to focus on policies that pertain to alcohol consumption on college campuses, specifically our own. To best describe the use of medical amnesty policies, let’s set up the following scenario.

            

            Two 18-year-old college freshmen, Tom and Jerry, are at a party consuming alcohol. Tom notices that Jerry is showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning that include unresponsiveness, heavy vomiting, and irregular breathing. The safest course of action would be to call 911 and get Jerry the help he needs. Tom, however, does not want to call for help because Jerry, as well as himself, could get in trouble for underage drinking. So Tom decides to just let Jerry work the alcohol out of his system and hope that he will be fine. Clearly, there is an extreme amount of risk being taken here and the choice Tom makes could cost Jerry his life. If medical amnesty policies were in place, Tom could call 911 without the fear of getting Jerry or himself in trouble with the law.

            

          The legal drinking age in the state of Pennsylvania is 21. A common misconception with the drinking age is that it is set at the federal level. The drinking age is actually set by each state, however, the federal government did have its part in setting this age. Believe it or not, the drinking age was actually set in the Federal Aid Highway Act (Section 158). Essentially, if states did not make the drinking age in their state 21, then they would receive 10% less funding for highways. States obviously did not want to lose funding so the easiest thing to do was to raise the drinking age from 18. I thought that understanding why the drinking age was set at 21 would be a good first step to understanding where problems with alcohol stem from. Now, I want to examine some statistics associated with drinking on college campuses. If problems associated with alcohol consumption are not numerous, then perhaps this project will not have the impact I am hoping for.

            

          I came across a fact sheet from the Center for Disease Control and it states that more than 4,600 youth under 21-years-old die each year in the United States due to excessive drinking. 

CDC Alcohol Fact Sheet

           While it is impossible to tell if medical amnesty policies could have helped prevent this staggering statistic, it is still a shocking number none the less. Another fact sheet I found comes from the organization Above the Influence. 

Alcohol Fact Sheet from Above the Influence

           This organization’s target audience is teenagers and it attempts to prevent drug use. While I personally believe that promoting complete abstinence from alcohol is an ineffective method of curtailing alcohol use, this organization has plenty of useful data and resources that help to put some significance behind drinking problems of youth under 21. Because of the stance this organization takes on alcohol use, it will be a biased source but hopefully with careful research technique, the facts can be extracted and the bias left behind.

           

           The next step I wanted to take was to research what some college campuses are doing already with regards to alcohol consumption on campus. I discovered the Amethyst Initiative which started in July of 2008 to discuss the problems of underage drinking and how the legal age of 21 was not effective. The full text of the document can be found at the Amethyst Initiative Website. The document has been signed by 136 college presidents/chancellors to urge public officials to re-examine the drinking age. While the organization does not necessarily say that it wants to lower the drinking age, it subtly seems to indicate that is its motive. The Initiative also looks to change the culture surrounding alcohol. Having recently come back from a trip to a country where alcohol could be purchased in a vending machine, I believe there is a stigma about alcohol that makes it so dangerous in this country.

           

           I have also found many universities with their own medical amnesty policies posted on their websites. One such school is Appalachian State University. 

Appalachian State University Medical Amnesty Policy

          I found one thing particularly interesting about this school’s policy: medical amnesty will only apply once. Personally, I believe this is fair because people will only use the system in an actual emergency and it prevents people from making the same mistake over and over. The University of Delaware also has a medical amnesty program in place and the details can be found at the University of Delaware's Website . This site does not go into as much detail as Appalachian State University’s policy but what is important is the fact they are more concerned about student safety than making sure a proper punishment is given out. I found many other schools with similar policies posted so perhaps I will include all the schools I find in another post.

           

          Medical amnesty policies for alcohol consumption on college campuses seem to have begun at Cornell University in the fall of 2002. This article references a spring 2000 survey on Cornell’s campus where 19% of respondents admitted to thinking about calling for help when they saw a fellow student suffering from alcohol poisoning. Only 4% of respondents ever actually called for help. In some regards, it is amazing how much fear the judicial system has put into the minds of underage drinkers that most would rather risk life or death just to not get in trouble. Overall, the article has several statistics from that closed campus study that could be of great use later in the research process.

            

          The last useful document that I wanted to mention is this proposal to the University of Richmond officials to enact medical amnesty policies. This succinct document provides statistics on college campus drinking as well as a list of colleges that have medical amnesty policies as of February 2010. While a couple of years dated, this proposal could be a good model to base our own proposal to the University of Pittsburgh officials. With a university of this magnitude, it seems amazing that medical amnesty policies have not been enacted to help protect students, especially freshman students who mostly have not been in contact with drinking in a college setting.

            

        While I continue my searching for this project, I’m hoping to find the exact text of the University of Pittsburgh’s underage policies as well as success stories of medical amnesty policies across the United States. In my opinion, the fight for medical amnesty policies on Pitt’s campus is a cause almost all students can get behind and enacting such policies would not require large amounts of effort on the part of our school officials. Perhaps with the right statistics and stories, a change for increased safety can be achieved on our campus.

Medical Amnesty

While performing some preliminary research, I came across this document from the University of Richmond. It is a proposal to the administration to put medical amnesty laws into place and it also contains a list of schools that have medical amnesty laws (as of February 2010). Some of the facts here are mind boggling.

Proposal for Medical Amnesty at the University of Richmond

Credits

Background Photo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Cathedral_of_Learning_Pitt.jpg

Welcome!!

Hi! My name is Justin Becker and welcome to my new blog! I am new to the whole world of blogging so this will be a new and interesting experience for me. I am going into my senior year at the University of Pittsburgh where I am studying Bioengineering and am pursing a minor in Chemistry. During the next six weeks, I will be using this blog to keep track of my research project for Writing for the Public. As of right now, I believe I will conducting research on medical amnesty laws and their effects on college campuses across the United States of America. I chose the Blogspot platform because I felt it was the easiest to access. The website URL is quite easy to remember: justinbecker.blogspot.com. I also felt that this platform was the most organized when I compared it to Tumblr and Wordpress. Tumblr seemed too simplistic and the Wordpress platform felt very busy. I had difficulty navigating through some example sites on Wordpress. Blogspot also lets me link directly into my Gmail accounts so I do not need another online account to keep track of my activities. I am also more familiar with the way Google products operate. I hope that you find the information on this blog interesting and informative. Please feel free to leave feedback as it will help me to become a better blogger and researcher!