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10-5.
Is that 20 in route?
Nobody thinks they're going to be the one to get caught.
I had two beers on me.
I drank a little too much before a concert.
It was just like any other weekend night.
And they found two beers and a little bit of marijuana.
You don't plan on going out and getting arrested.
They think when they get arrested that it's just an
internal thing.
Put your hands behind your back.
I think what they don't realize is all the different
repercussions.
I thought it was just a regular
night going on at campus.
I thought we were going to have a little fun.
Obviously it didn't turn out that way.
I felt like a prisoner, and I never really saw myself in
that situation.
They took me to the Strafford police station, where I had to
sleep there overnight.
They should be here to go to school, not to go to the
courthouse down the street or to jail.
My name's Joe Conforti.
My name is Collin Merritt.
I go to UNH Durham, and my major is civil engineering.
And I go to UNH, and I am in business.
We were going to head downtown,
see what was up downtown.
We were encountered by some cops.
And we had beer in our backpacks.
Cops pulled us aside, found alcohol on us,
and arrested us.
They put us in a paddy wagon and brought us to Durham
police station.
We sat in a five-by-nine room.
We were handcuffed to a pole, got our picture taken.
Since about 1998 we've taken a stance here that everybody
who's arrested gets transported and booked.
And we've found that that tactic, though time-consuming
and costly, has had a great impact on the decrease of
violent crime here on the weekend.
Joseph Conforti.
For Collin and Joe, they were both charged with illegal
possession of alcohol.
Their cases are very common.
As far as the legal services that I provide here at UNH,
those types of cases are probably 70%
to 80% of my caseload.
If they're under the age of 21, you can't possess alcohol
in the State of New Hampshire.
So if you have it in your possession, whether it's open
or closed, it's a violation of the law.
My name's Sarah Karr.
I go to UNH.
And I'm majoring in recreation and management policy.
It was just like any other weekend night.
I just go out with my friends.
We usually just go to different
apartments, hang out.
At first I was drinking hard alcohol, which I
usually don't do.
By like 10 o'clock I was already pretty intoxicated.
So that's when I decided to go back to my dorm room.
But right when I was about to swipe in, the police officer
had come up behind me and told me that I was being arrested
and I was being taken to the Durham police station.
He knew that I had been drinking,
because he saw me stumbling.
A lot of times in a college community, you'll find 18-,
19-, 20-year-olds who appear to be intoxicated and are
intoxicated, but they're not actually
holding a can of beer.
So under the internal possession law, it allows us
to charge them as if they were holding a beer in their hand
or possessing the actual beer.
After that I kind of freaked out.
I was bawling hysterically.
They took me to a cop car.
And then we went down to the police station.
And when I was there I had to sit there
handcuffed to a bench.
And they took me to a room and made me sign the paperwork.
And after that, I thought I'd be done, but--
Most police departments have some sort of policy, which
goes right in line with New Hampshire law, to place
someone into protective custody, which is up to a
24-hour hold at the local county jail.
Excuse me, wait, where am I going?
You're going to county jail.
So you go to jail if you're so intoxicated that you could
potentially be perceived as a danger to
yourself or to others.
And we take everyone the Strafford County jail.
UNH police with one.
This is horrible.
Sarah's case is very typical of what
happens here on campus.
Do you want my earrings, too?
The vast majority of students find that the worst part of
the whole process, is that they ended up having to spend
a night in jail.
It was awful.
It was one of the worst things ever.
It was really gross.
The toilets are gross.
And I just so badly wanted to get out of there.
I do not think that the vast majority of students ever
think that they will spend even a minute in jail, much
less an entire night in jail.
Never in a million years.
That's the thing.
That night I was so shocked, and I didn't
know what to expect.
And I think if more students realized that that kind of
risky behavior of engaging in that illegal, risky behavior
and putting themselves in jeopardy of coming into
contact with police, of getting arrested--
even for a minor infraction, a very minor infraction--
but they are intoxicated at the time and so they have to
be placed in protective custody and held at the jail.
I think if students understood that and saw what it was like,
I think that would change their minds and make an impact
of, gee, this is something I need to be more careful about.
And that's what I'm hoping, that they'll get the message
from seeing this.
My name is Ron Harrington.
I'm a junior at the University of New Hampshire.
I'm studying political science and business.
Drug cases are definitely something we see a lot of.
They found two beers and a little bit of marijuana.
Alcohol cases are definitely up there.
They're the higher numbers.
But drug cases are right behind it, yeah.
All right, we have five complaints here.
It was the second time I've gotten arrested in a very
short amount of time.
And so he now is facing multiple charges and has the
possibility of jail time and fines.
And he is almost definitely going to lose his federal
financial aid.
Pretty much one of the worst days of my life.
Address the issues, and move on with your life.
Basically, if I get in trouble again I'm in
some serious trouble.
He made that very clear.
So I've got to make sure to make very good choices.
My name's Bobby Butler, and I go to
University of New Hampshire.
And I play forward for the Wildcats.
Couple of shots.
Score, he picks the top shelf.
And Bobby Butler has the Wildcats back on top by four.
I was celebrating my 20th birthday, and I drank a little
too much before a concert.
And then as the concert went on, it got to me.
And after the concert is when it really happened, when I was
trying to go to my dorm but I went into the wrong dorm and
destructed a screen and just was disrupting students.
Campus Safety showed up, I went overnight
in Strafford County.
It was an experience that hopefully I'll have to go
through again.
Bobby Butler breaks the ice.
It's 1-0, UNH.
I know my dad was disappointed, and
my mom and my coach.
And I disappointed my teammates, too, because we're
all a team, so UNH definitely has everything the same.
I went through a lot of stuff.
I went to AA meetings.
I did 100 hours community service.
So I was busy, not only trying to stay out of trouble last
year but also doing a lot of extracurriculars besides being
at the rink and being in the classroom.
My name is John Butler, and I'm the father of Bob Butler.
He's a good kid.
He worked hard to get where he is today, academically and
athletically.
Like every kid, I think sometimes
he makes bad decisions.
I think every parent, whether they were a student athlete of
just a student at a school when they go to college, they
dread that phone call that their son or daughter screwed
up, whether it's academically, or with
the police, or drinking.
He made the phone call and told us what happened.
We were disappointed.
We were glad he was OK.
And we just told him there's a big lesson
he'll learn from this.
It's going to be you let a lot of people down, disappointed a
lot of people, and lost a lot of our trust.
So he had a lot of work ahead of him to correct
the mistake he made.
Any place on UNH property is primarily handled by the
University Police Department.
Town property's handled by the Durham Police Department.
But we both have concurrent jurisdiction, meaning we can
arrest them in town as well as on campus, as they can arrest
on campus as well as in town.
They think when they get arrested that's it's just an
internal thing.
In fact, the university police department's a full-service
law enforcement agency.
We report all our statistics to the FBI.
So when you get arrested here, your fingerprints not only go
so the state police but to the FBI.
And you get a criminal record.
I see lots and lots of students, particularly on
Monday mornings, lined up outside my office door wanting
to meet with me because they've been arrested over the
weekend or have gotten in trouble.
And they're really concerned.
The time to really be concerned is before that
arrest happens.
Even though you tell them, it doesn't sink in.
I would say we average between three and five phone calls a
month from graduates who are applying for jobs on Wall
Street, jobs that require government clearances.
And when their records are run it shows that they've been
arrested by the University of New Hampshire Police
Department.
And they panic to try to--
What can I do to get this off my record?
I didn't realize this was going to affect me so much.
I think that students and young people in general know,
obviously, that drinking under the age of 21 is illegal.
I think they know that if they get caught they're going to
get in some level of trouble, like have to pay a fine and
that sort of thing.
I don't think they realize all of the different
repercussions.
I really didn't think the fines would be that much.
A first offense is $300.
A second offense is $600.
You may be seated.
Durham District Court is right here in town.
It meets once a week, and generally those court
days are very busy.
There's lots and lots of students that end up-- if they
get in trouble, they most likely will
have to go to court.
They'll have to go in front of the judge.
It's a very daunting experience.
We have a charge of unlawful possession and intoxication.
I didn't think I'd have to come to court.
I've been to court before, but for a speeding ticket.
I really didn't think my alcohol problem was that much
that I'd have to go to court for it.
In most cases where students are evicted, it probably does
involve alcohol or drugs.
It doesn't really matter what time of year it is.
It could be the first day of school, it could be the last
day of school.
It's pretty consistently a year of loss of housing.
If you get kicked off campus, it is very hard to find a
place to live.
And you may end up on someone's couch or somewhere
that you're not supposed to be.
And that, in turn, gets those tenants in trouble.
And the landlord could get in trouble.
It's just a bad situation.
There's a new incoming class this year, and they need to be
educated on what's expected in the way to
act on and off campus.
When kids come into the university, I think their goal
here is to be students but also to know that they are
citizens of the community.
With regard to social activities and parties, I
think they need to know that there is a responsibility
there, whether they're on campus or off campus, and to
respect the university when they're on campus and respect
the town when they are off campus.
The standard penalty for underage possession of alcohol
and underage intoxication is to have your privilege to
drive suspended for anywhere from 90 days and up to one
year, on a first offense.
Even if you're not around your car, you're still can get your
license taken away if you were caught with
possession of alcohol.
Even if they have a license from out of state, it's their
privilege to drive in New Hampshire that gets suspended.
And then New Hampshire notifies their home state.
And in most states their home state will then
suspend them as well.
I drive everywhere.
I drive home, to college and back.
I can't rely on my mom picking me up everywhere.
I'm not 15 again.
I kind of live on my car.
Any arrest will trigger the university to look at a
students and say, do they get scholarships, grants, and are
they planning on studying abroad?
If a student has an alcohol or other drug violation, they are
going to have their scholarship docked.
The first time they may not lose the whole scholarship.
But if it's egregious enough, under certain programs they
could lose a very big chunk of it.
After the first time, their chances of losing their
scholarship totally, for at least a year, are very high.
Any drug conviction makes you ineligible for federal
financial aid.
And that's that long list of federal financial aid programs
which can include the Stafford Loans, guaranteed student
loans, the Parent PLUS program.
There's quite a bit that are affected.
If a student is found responsible for violating the
code of conduct, particularly if it's related to alcohol or
drugs, they will be on probation for a year.
And during that time that they're on probation, they
will have a very hard time being able to study abroad.
Even if they're supposed to be leaving in two weeks and
they've already got their plane tickets, if they've been
arrested there's a very good chance they will not be
allowed to study abroad.
The Office of Conduct and Mediation is responsible for
implementing the student code of conduct.
The code of conduct is basically the standards that
the students, whether graduate or undergraduate, at UNH are
supposed to live by.
In cases where there's alcohol violation, a number of
different sanctions can apply if they're found responsible.
If it's the first violation it may be that they would receive
a fine, an alcohol awareness class, and they'd be on
probation for a year automatically, which really
can impact choices that they make down the
road as college students.
I just got drunk at one of my buddy's houses.
Counseling is available in two locations on campus, the
primary office where students come to is the Office of
Health Education and Promotion at the health services.
We have an "alcohol, tobacco, and other drug" educator,
counselor, who's willing to meet with students one-on-one
who need support, counseling, education around their own or
another's alcohol and other drug use.
Now, have you family at all been concerned about your
drinking, or do they not know about this?
In addition, a counseling center located at Schofield
House also has a staff of psychologists who are willing
to meet with students who need assistance in
this area as well.
For students, if they choose to drink, one thing the
students need to realize is that when they begin drinking,
it becomes harder to make good decisions because of how
alcohol affects the body and behavior, impacts the central
nervous system.
So right there, they really need to be very careful about
how much they're choosing to drink, so that they can make
the choices they need to make for themselves, so they don't
harm themselves or others short or long term.
You see it every year, and it's really a shame.
And that's what we hope, we get the message out, which is
that they come here as freshmen, they have all these
freedoms now for the first time in their life, usually,
and they really have to be a little bit careful.
In a way it was kind of like a blessing, because I see the
mistakes that I've made.
And now I will never do that again.
So I've learned a lot.
From start to finish it's a long process.
A lot of nerves, having your friends find out, telling your
parents, going to court.
I mean, I had to take a day off of work to go to this.
That's money that it cost me, not to mention just the pure
embarrassment.
There's no reason you need to go out an drink as much as
people really do, to have fun.
If any parent thinks that their kids don't experiment or
try stuff at the college level, they're pretty naive.
It's going to happen.
It's if your kid knows when to stop and when to be smart and
make the right decision not to get in some trouble.
So it's something you shouldn't be ashamed of.
It's something you should tell other people so when their son
and daughter go to school, they pay attention and look
for those signs when their kids are making bad decisions.
They have to be responsible for living
within this UNH community.
But also, our job is to help empower them to use their
heads and make the best choices, so that they can get
the best out of their education here and also
practice living in the world outside of UNH
once they leave here.
Choices do matter.
That's the moral of the story.
Choices do matter.