GUEST ESSAY: A step toward safety

Max Hines led an Interfraternity Council initiative that led to a 2,000% increase in the number of IFC members trained on Narcan and overdose prevention.

I have had the pleasure of working on a team committed to this movement as I served on the Interfraternity Council (IFC) board this past year and was elected as president of IFC this year. The ability to put pen to paper to contribute to the risk management of such a prevalent issue in our community has been a learning experience, and I hope this initiative will spread to the rest of campus in the future.

My decision to serve on IFC originally felt like an opportunity to just add to my resume and learn more about the Greek community. As I became more acclimated to the role, however, I soon realized the potential my executive board and I had to be pioneers in improving the education and safety against drug misuse.

Under my tenure as VP of Membership Development of IFC, I saw an opportunity within my position to address a problem that has impacted our communities back home and also on campus and has only seemed to spread like wildfire: fentanyl. The reality was that this narcotic had claimed far too many lives in North Carolina — including a student at NC State — and beyond, and not enough was being done to fight it.

We as an executive board realized that our members were not immune to the issues pervasive in our community but were committed to our responsibility of being part of the solution. We made the decision this past March to meet with Prevention Services to originally just receive extra insight on the problem, but what came of this interaction sparked an initiative that put our members and guests in safer hands.

In my meetings with Jeffrey Fay, Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Coordinator, he further educated me on the current fentanyl epidemic. The modern reality is that measures of risk prevention have not proven to be effective because people have free will to decide what they put in their bodies. Therefore, risk reduction measures should be put in place instead to ensure that people who make these decisions can go about it as knowledgeably and as safely as possible.

With this new knowledge of risk reduction, I looked to our council’s Narcan & Overdose Training policy for evaluation. Our policy at the time only required chapter presidents to attend one cumulative training session once a year, which I found insufficient for the health and safety of IFC members and guests in the potential absence of their top officer at an event.

In collaboration with Jeff and Prevention Services, our executive board was able to rewrite our Narcan & Overdose training policy. Jeff and his team lent out their hand and were willing to devote extra time in his day outside of his shift to hold sessions for each IFC chapter individually. Within this, we did not require, but encouraged the attendance of all members of each chapter for their respective training sessions.

Within each session, members were first educated on the opioid epidemic and alcohol-related topics such as standard drinks and levels of BAC. They were then taught how to administer Narcan to an individual in the event of a potential overdose, which could reverse the overdose and save their life.

From the start of the fall semester in August to the end of September, we trained four IFC chapters per week. In the end, this led to a 2,000% increase in the number of members educated and trained on the topic and hundreds more Narcan kits accessible to our members when their brothers’ lives are on the line.

This pilot program with IFC all stemmed from a thought to be proactive for others, and was fortunately able to come to fruition. This program would not have been possible without the continuous effort of Jeffrey Fay and his team at Prevention Services to keep our community safe. Life is too precious to not have measures in place to protect it, and Narcan is just the start on our campus. 

We have the ability, the duty and the opportunity to serve our fellow human beings. Whether it be this life-saving kit or just stepping in the line of adversity to protect our peers, I hope this initiative can spread outside our IFC community and grant safety and comfort for not just NC State, but college campuses nationwide.