Daily Campus

Issue date: 8/23/07 Section: Opinion

There are many disturbing parts to the stories of the students' deaths, but the one that bothers me most is that not only did no one intervene when they saw these people were in trouble; no one even admits to having seen the drinking or drug use, much less the slide into coma and death. Intervening is hard, I know. Seeing seems to be hard as well. In my conversations with people about these events, the one thing most say is that SMU, like many other universities, has a problem in its "culture." Culture helps us to know what is normal, and maybe our sense of what is normal has blinded us to some dangers. But what can be done about a culture? It can't be dictated. It can't be "fixed." At least I don't think it can, since culture refers to the whole world of interactions, values, pleasures and meanings that allow us to live together. Change, I suspect, is going to have to come from a hundred different places.

We will be talking to a lot of individuals and groups on and off campus. I want to hear how those in this community are thinking about both the problems and the solutions. I am wondering how other groups are planning on getting involved. At the end of the semester, I hope we have done more than produce a report. In the meantime, we should probably all be thinking about whether and how we might be responsible to those one, two or three people in our midst who may need our help to make it through the year.



About the writer:

Dennis Foster is a professor of English and a member of the SMU Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention.

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