Editorial: Friends mourned and lessons learned

Posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009, 12:00 am

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Last weekend we lost one of our peers, Dylan Lyford. Lyford was 19 years old and a first-year. He went to a party; the next day an ambulance transported him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. It could have been anyone.

Robert Dana, vice president for Student Affairs said he heard from a student that “there was a lot of alcohol involved, and he had fallen down the stairs.”

At parties, it is often difficult to tell the right thing to do when a friend gets too drunk. Sometimes you risk having the friend, and maybe the caller, get in trouble – in addition to having to go through the difficulty of calling police, an ambulance, etc. It can be scary, and who knows? Maybe your friend will sleep it off. Or maybe not.

Other schools enforce mandatory alcohol education courses for first-years. Alcohol and Drug Education Programs on campus teaches some campus groups not only the science of being drunk but also what signs to watch out for in a drunk friend and what to do in different situations. Perhaps the University of Maine should consider instituting a mandatory alcohol education course – even if it happens just for one day of orientation – to be proactive and prevent future tragedies.

Hospital amnesty to protect students who do the right thing by calling 911 could also help. As it stands now, if a 20-year-old who had drank a little called 911 for a friend who was also underage and dangerously drunk, both of those students could get in trouble for underage drinking. This fear may prevent some students from calling for help when it’s the only safe choice.