Red Watch Band Program

The mother of a Northwestern student who died from toxic alcohol poisoning is reaching out to colleges and universities everywhere to try to help others be saved from such a tragic death. 

Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny, the first woman and first humanist to serve as President of Stony Brook University in New York, started the Red Watch Band Program. Together with Dr. Jenny Hwang,  Associate Dean & Director for Prevention and Outreach Center at Stony Brook University, they are making Stony Brook a safer place.

The Red Watch Band Program is being instituted at Loyola University in Chicago campuses.  It came at the request of a mother whose son died after students at Northwestern neglected to help save him following a party in June, 2008. She turned to Clifford Law Offices for help so that other students on other campuses could be saved from toxic alcohol poisoning.

The mission of this program is to provide campus community members with a greater knowledge, awareness and skills to prevent student toxic drinking deaths and to promote a student culture of kindness, responsibility, compassion and respect.  The national movement is intended to train students on appropriate steps to take when a fellow student passes out from consuming too much alcohol.

At the recommendation of Clifford Law Offices, Loyola is participating in this important program which includes a four-hour training session for participants to learn how to recognize alcohol emergencies and to respond effectively.

Proponents of the Red Watch Band Program also point out a recent Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study from July, 2008, which suggests that universities need to develop a broader approach to dealing with binge drinking that goes beyond individual students and targets the alcohol environment at the college and its surrounding community.  The way alcohol is made available, marketed and served to students must be changed in a preventative effort, and greater supervision and more stringent accreditation requirements for Greek organizations also is pointed out by the study.

To find out more about instituting a new chapter at a university or college campus, please contact jenny.hwang@stonybrook.edu or call Dr. Hwang at 631-632-2748.