A crowd no bigger than 140 people at its peak listens during the Student Senate sponsored Town Hall Forum on the recent drug and alcohol related deaths and possible changes. (John Schreiber)

A meager showing of students and faculty met with the members of the Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention in the Hughes-Trigg Theater on Monday night. Student Senate hosted the Town Hall Forum to discuss the use of alcohol and other drugs in the SMU community.

At the forum, attendees had the opportunity to present the task force with questions, comments and possible solutions to the prevalent abuse of alcohol and drugs on campus. Despite being open to the entire SMU community, the number of audience members peaked at around 140 people.

“I’m disappointed more people didn’t come,” task force co-chair Thomas Tunks said afterward.

Much of the discussion for those in attendance surrounded the possible implementation of “Good Samaritan” and medical amnesty policies. Many students who spoke seemed to be in favor of such policies.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said vice chair for student concerns, junior Amber Venz. “I think it will go a long way to change the culture of our campus.”

With a Good Samaritan policy, if a student tries to help a friend who was drinking or taking drugs, the student who calls for help would not be punished. Under a medical amnesty policy, a student who asked for help with a medical emergency would not face punishment from the university.

One of the first topics discussed concerned the Greek community. One student, who identified himself only as Ryan, felt that residents of Greek houses were being unfairly targeted for alcohol violations by law enforcement on campus.

The task force denied putting a special focus on the Greeks and noted that the Greek community is just highly visible in the school.

“People look to the Greeks for leadership,” Board of Trustees member Jean Cox said. “So the Greeks can reach the student body.”

Sophomore Mackenzie Warren believes that because SMU PD is no longer handling parking issues, their enforcement focus has negatively shifted.

“I feel like this has really shifted their attention to kind of being the bullies,” said Warren. “They’re bombarding the fraternity houses.”

She feels that because police are focusing their attention on enforcing drug and alcohol policies, the safety of sober students is compromised.

Questions from the task force focused around how to keep students on campus and away from the off-campus drug and alcohol influences.

“SMU needs to consider a place where students can go at night and maybe have pool tables or ping pong tables with TVs” said first-year senator Erika Briceno. “It should be open late so people aren’t encouraged to go out to Greenville and out to parties where there will be alcohol and they will be tempted to drink.”

Briceno expressed her frustration with the lack of safe entertainment for underage students.

In response, junior Jayanth Mandyam rejected Briceno’s suggestion, citing that the university failed at a similar attempt years ago.

“Nobody came because there was no alcohol so they’d rather go get drunk,” said Mandyam.

After Mandyam singled out the university’s handling of publicizing recent student deaths, he was asked to step down from the microphone by Student Body President Katherine Tullos.

Furthermore, first-year Elizabeth Stroud commented that sometimes alcohol abuse prevention can go too far.

“I feel I’m treated as a criminal before being proven innocent,” Stroud said after relating an incident in which she was approached by SMU police questioning what was in her shopping bags. “I have a sense of paranoia about me now.”

The stated goal of the Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention is to gather information from the SMU campus and outside sources to make recommendations on methods to stop drug abuse. The task force is currently in a research phase and will make recommendations in December.

For those who couldn’t participate in the forum and wish to comment, the Task Force on Substance Abuse and Prevention has a Web site: smu.edu/smunews/liveresponsibly