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.