Students want to extend ‘lifeline law’ to peers experiencing alcohol-related emergency

Since 2012, teenagers and young adults calling for help for a friend in need of medical assistance in an alcohol-related emergency have avoided prosecution for crimes related to being at an underage drinking party under Indiana’s Lifeline Law.

Those having the medical emergency are still at risk of being charged with a crime. But students from Purdue University in West Lafayette are pushing to extend immunity to them as well, helping to prevent students from having a criminal record for one youthful mistake.

“It’s a first-time offense, and they don’t deserve to have it permanently on their record. Or it’s the rest of their college career and life because of one stupid mistake when they just got on campus,” said Rebecca Siener, vice president of Purdue Student Government.

Siener is talking about underage alcohol consumption and the risks that accompany it when minors first try alcohol but don’t understand its effects, often in their first year of college.

With the help of student leaders from universities across the state, Siener and others are trying to change state law to ensure everyone under the legal drinking age can have a second chance.

That chance, Senate Bill 74, was introduced to the Senate Committee on Corrections and Criminal Law in early January. Since then, the bill has cleared the full Senate and is awaiting action in the House.

SB 74 would expand an existing state law that protects minors who seek help for their peers from being charged with crimes such as public intoxication, minor possession, minor consumption, and minor transport of alcohol.

To receive this immunity, those on scene must cooperate with law enforcement officers and other authorities and stay with the person experiencing a medical emergency until help arrives.

The original Lifeline Law began just as SB 74 did, with college students seeing a need on campus that wasn’t being met, according to the Indiana Youth Services Association.

After seeing fellow students suffer injuries or even death at the hands of alcohol poisoning, student government leaders began looking at ways to encourage minors on the scene to seek help.

The Senate bill

According to student advocates for SB 74, the Lifeline Law is incomplete without an expansion.

“Our students are more fearful of the legal repercussions of underage drinking than the potentially life-threatening condition of alcohol poisoning,” Siener told senators at a Corrections and Criminal Law committee meeting on Jan. 14.

Senate Bill 74 first began taking shape when Siener and Purdue Student Government president Jason Packard were part of the university’s Residential Hall Association, a student organization that acts as the governing body for residence halls at Purdue.

“We had to call 911 for an ambulance probably every single weekend out of the school year because we found an abandoned student who wasn’t helped by their friend,” Packard told senators of his time as a residential assistant for a freshman dorm.

Gleaning from their own experiences with underage students on campus, Siener said she and Packard knew that to make real change, they would have to start on the student government level.

The two ran for student government on the platform that they would update the law to provide immunity for everyone in these situations.

With help from former state Sen. James Merritt and other student government leaders, Siener and Packard were able to get the bill off the ground. Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, joined the cause when he agreed to author the bill.

Impact on college campuses

For those concerned that granting immunity for underage drinking promotes the act, Tippecanoe County Prosecutor Pat Harrington said that in his years working with the law, that hasn’t been the case.

“The students who needed help didn’t plan on going out and drinking so much that they became in a life-threatening situation. It’s just the drinking got out of hand,” he said.

He said that, in reality, the cases they see usually involve either inexperience with alcohol and an individuals’ threshold for it or the peer pressure to start drinking and keep at it.

According to the 2023 Indiana State Epidemiological Profile, which measures the use of certain substances across the state, the use of alcohol among Hoosiers ages 12 and older has steadily gone down since the number peaked in 2013.

Further, the percentage of Hoosiers ages 18-25 who reported current alcohol use has decreased steadily since 2013, reaching a 12-year low in 2021.

One of the most urgent matters in the Lifeline Law is ensuring students are well-educated on who the law applies to. It’s this education that acts as a line of defense for students stepping into potentially dangerous situations in college.

But both Packard and Siener said education can be difficult and confusing because the law doesn’t provide total protection for all parties.

“It’s so difficult to disseminate this information when you have to tell them that caveat, because that could cause them to hesitate,” Siener said.

Education on the Lifeline Law at Purdue usually happens within residential housing and at Boiler Gold Rush, Purdue’s freshman orientation program, Siener said.

The Purdue student leaders hope that by granting protection for all parties involved, students will remember that the law exists and can quickly utilize it.

Plus, updating the law would align with Purdue’s internal policies.

Purdue’s policies don’t allow under-age offenders to get off scot-free, however.

“You still have to go to counseling and you have to agree to treatment,” she said. “You have to agree to having these follow up conversations, but it won’t go on your housing or your academic record if you’re the person in need of medical attention.”

On Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, students experiencing an alcohol-related medical emergency and those who seek help for them are exempt from disciplinary sanctions under the Medical Amnesty for Student Intoxication policy.

Enacted in 2011, the policy emphasizes the university’s biggest concern is for the health and safety of those involved in an emergency, and how removing the threat of disciplinary measures makes students more likely to ask for help.

Similar policies are in place at other universities around the state, including Indiana University, Ball State University and the University of Southern Indiana. Some of these policies include the caveat that students can only be exempt so long as they complete educational programming related to the offense.

“Our dean is responsible, and our Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities is responsible to have those conversations and to make sure that they are getting the proper counseling and treatment that they need,” Siener said. “And they always do that on our campus.”

Harrington, the Tippecanoe County prosecutor, said he’s encouraged by the work Purdue students have put in to ensure SB 74 puts student safety first.

“They have an excellent plan ready to put in effect to expand the education to incoming freshmen and all the organizations [at] Purdue that if this becomes law, to further the education process so students understand and make that call for help,” he said.•