<p>Thank you for a wonderful post, Jonri. I have been a friend of the Sunshines for many years, and know how caring and committed they were to both of their children. Their grief at Matthew’s death was, and remains, terrible; and it was the smug, cruel “I blame the parents” comments on the Daily Northwestern site that prompted me to start this (perhaps unfortunately named) thread.</p>
<p>None of us wants to think that something like this could ever happen to us, but unfortunately most of our children will do something really stupid and dangerous at least once in their lives (as have most of us if we’re willing to admit it). Most of the time we’re lucky: The kids drink way too much but quite enough to kill them, or someone watches out for them and calls for help. </p>
<p>I don’t know if colleges can truly stop risky behavior any more than parents can, but I believe they can do more to promote student safety. I think amnesty programs can help, as can more effective education through something like the Red Watch Band in how to recognize and respond to emergencies. (After Matthew died, I had some disturbing conversations with my own college-age kids and their peers that suggested that while the message about drinking and driving had gotten through, these young adults had dangerously naive ideas about the safety of leaving a drunken, possibly unconscious friend to “sleep it off.”) Colleges can actively foster a culture in which, as the Dean of Harvard College once put it, “The main thing we don’t want is for someone to die” ( <a href=“http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~lewis/Alcohol-Independent.pdf[/url]”>www.eecs.harvard.edu/~lewis/Alcohol-Independent.pdf</a>). </p>
<p>Jonri sums it up perfectly:
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