The out-of-control party at Amherst College, aided and abetted by uninvited UMass students, stands out even when viewed through the staid prism of a public safety weekend run report.
All seven weekend emergency responses to Amherst College are of the nuisance kind.
8 comments:
an ambulance for a sore throat at hampshire college???? great use of an emergency vehicle???
It must be meningitis!
"Sore Throat" might actually be a legitimate medical *emergency* -- particularly when dealing with young men who often minimize their distress.
When I went to the hospital with a "sore throat", they immediately put me on oxygen -- I had a severe case of pneumonia and there were some serous questions as to if I was going to die from it.
On the other hand, this could be a spoilt brat using the EMS as his personal taxi service, and as there is no indication of the severity/urgency of the run (not even if they rolled "Code 1, 2, or 3"), the statistics are useless for anything more than a simple tally of number of times they drove someone to the hospital.
For example, the "found outside, unconscious" run -- I can think of a dozen different possibilities ranging from ETOH/drugs to trauma -- either malicious (e.g. assault or suicide attempt) or accidental (e.g. slip/fall on ice and hitting head) -- to medical stuff ranging from hypoglycemia (e.g. insulin shock) to a heart attack.
That's why I say these statistics are really meaningless -- was this someone passed out drunk or someone having a heart attack -- why was the person unconscious?
Absent corresponding tox scans, even the "ETOH" statistics are meaningless -- even if the BAC was listed, there is no way to distinguish between situations where the medical issue is the ETOH, where it's an issue in combination with the illegal drugs the person has consumed -- and those cases where the ETOH is largely (medically) irrelevant.
Remember that it was Valium and Narcotics -- in combination with both ETOH and her radical diet (not having eaten in two days) that killed Karen Ann Quinlan -- and that kids today routinely consume far more dangerous combinations than even the one she did...
The phrase "uninvited UMass students" seems to imply that you blame UMass students for the rowdiness of this year's Amherst Christmas. Amherst Christmas is designed by Amherst students as a massive dorm party where RAs shut their eyes and everyone gets hammered. It was highly populated with UMass students last year as well, with students from both institutions spilling all over the grounds, and there was not nearly as heavy a police response. It's also not an event that requires an invitation - it's entirely open to whoever shows up.
There are plenty of Amherst kids who party just as hard as UMass kids, or even more (more money = better drugs and alcohol). The difference is that Amherst is a private school which hushes up many of their disciplinary issues, or just turns a blind eye to much of the rowdy behavior that their students participate in.
The population is also maybe 1/20th the size of UMass' - their students don't make as much of an impact on the town because there aren't enough of them. The fact that UMass gets more heat doesn't mean the behavior of an Amherst student is any better than the behavior of a UMass student.
Turning this Amherst-created party into another item on your list of reasons explaining how UMass students are destroying your quaint little college town is extremely unfair. If anyone at UMass tried to throw an event like Amherst Christmas, it would be shut down in less than an hour. Both of your posts about this event have basically blamed UMass for something that Amherst did, because UMass is the "local juggernaut" and Amherst is a point of pride.
UMass' reputation is never going to improve if people like you keep perpetuating these ideas, and UMass students are never going to want to respect their neighbors when they know articles like this will cause their neighbors to never respect them.
Hire a hitman (or woman).
Low blow, Larry. You are better than that.
Start your own blog. They're free you know (sort of).
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