If you aren’t outraged now, you may be by the end of this post.
In early October, Massachusetts high school honor student Erin Cox received a message from a friend who had been drinking, asking for a ride home from a party. According to the Boston Herald, Cox arrived to pick up her friend just as law enforcement showed up to arrest students for underage drinking.
Cox didn’t attend the party and hadn’t taken a sip of alcohol. She’d just gotten off of work at the Andover Inn and had met some friends at a yogurt shop when she received the message asking for a ride. Police cleared her in writing during her court appearance last Friday. But her school prohibits students from attending parties where there is alcohol, and it punished the student athlete in what most are calling a blind application of a “zero tolerance” policy. Cox was stripped of her title as captain of the volleyball team and suspended from five games.
North Andover High School just handed every teen a ready-made excuse NOT to do the right thing in order to avoid getting into trouble. The school could have used the incident to drive more awareness of the risks of underage drinking and to emphasize the lifetime importance of a safe ride home. Instead, district officials seem to have set drunk-driving messaging back by decades.
In June we reported on an Arizona case, where some college students, afraid of getting in trouble as Minors in Possession, left an unconscious friend at a local ER with a note to alert staff that he had been drinking heavily and needed help. He had a 0.47 BAC. Cases like this have prompted a dozen states to pass “Alcohol Amnesty” laws that establish limited immunity from prosecution for minors who seek medical help.
So do underage designated drivers fall through the cracks?
It would seem laws are moving light years ahead of schools, an irony to be sure. So what about underage designated drivers? And what of the prevalence of these Zero Tolerance policies? Do these extend to having dinner with your parents in a business with a bar? Thanksgiving with the neighbors who serve wine? Christmas at Aunt Martha’s?
The district is standing firmly behind its policy. According to attorney Geoffrey Bok, who represented the school in court on Friday, they “had little choice” once police became involved.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other organizations who advocate against underage drinking have yet to respond to the topic, but the story has gone viral, including a change.org petition supporting Cox.
I, for one, am grateful Cox took at least one drunk driver off the street that night.
