In Good Hands

When Charles “Jonah” Wendt ’18 graduates from Trinity this May, he’ll be leaving a lifeline for fellow students behind him.

Wendt, a political science major, along with University of Alabama junior Gerald Fraas, is a co-founder of Students for Opioid Solutions (SOS), a student-run organization that aims to prevent opioid overdoses on college campuses nationwide.

Opioids include commonly-known prescription drugs such as oxycodone and morphine, along with illegally produced variants of Fentanyl and the illegal substance heroin. Overdoses from these types of drugs killed more than 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016—more than car crashes—and this public health crisis has caught the attention of the federal government, with President Donald Trump establishing a federal task force in October 2017 to confront the issue.

“People are dying from overdoses across the country,” Wendt says. “And we can do something about it.”

SOS, in simple terms, aims to lobby universities nationwide to train and equip campus police officers and RAs to recognize and respond to opioid overdoses. There’s a proven antidote, Naloxone (known in prescription form as Narcan), that SOS wants to put in the hands of first responders. The group also wants colleges to start reporting statistics on all opioid-related deaths, along with providing amnesty for students who suffer or report overdoses.

“We’re doing this through student government legislation,” Wendt says. “If we can get student governments to pass legislation supporting these goals, that puts pressure on schools to do something.”

Wendt, no stranger to activism, is a leader in Trinity’s conservative student group, Tigers for Liberty. At Trinity, students like Wendt are empowered to to tackle national issues—such as the opioid crisis—regardless of their position on the political spectrum, says political science professor David Crockett.

“I’ve had Jonah in a few classes, and I can say he’s used his preternatural energy to organize a response to a national issue,” Crockett. “Trinity encourages students to establish groups, to solve problems, using bipartisan solutions—and this issue is a bipartisan one.”

SOS has already helped student governments at six universities pass opioid-related legislation—including Ohio State, Colorado State, and Alabama—and has a presence at more than 80 total schools spread through more than 40 states.

Wendt says the main strength of this type of action is through a preventative strategy.

“Most of the time, something bad has to happen before we change a policy,” Wendt says.

“But we need to get everybody trained now and get Narcan in the hands of RAs and police departments, so if this does happen to someone, the kid’s going to be safe.”

But until now, Wendt notes that schools across the country haven’t had all the tools necessary to protect students from opioids. Wendt and Fraas, who met while working summer internships in Washington D.C., were actually spurred to create SOS after one of Fraas’ fellow students at Alabama suffered a fatal overdose.

“No one was able to recognize what had happened to him,” Wendt says.

At Trinity, coordinator of health services Jackie Bevilacqua says the University is working hard to prevent such a tragedy from happening on campus. Health Services, along with Campus Police and University administrators, have developed an extensive partnership with the Bexar County Opioid Task Force. They are currently deep in the process of securing state funding for training and supplies of the Narcan antidote through a Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) grant.

“There’s a lot of work going on,” Bevilacqua says. “And we’re confident, once the state finishes processing the CARA grant contract, that this will be a great help to our first responders.”

Even with Wendt stepping down as SOS executive director when he graduates in May, he envisions the organization moving toward a goal of reducing opioid-related deaths on college campuses to zero. Wendt will remain on the SOS board starting this summer, and he says the organization is currently searching for a new national field director.

Wendt also plans to return to the capital this summer and says he’ll champion the cause there, too.

“There’s a lot of politically involved kids in the D.C. area who will ‘carry the water’ back to their campuses,” Wendt says.

But even as Wendt steps away, he’s taking the time to appreciate the magnitude of the organization’s success. Student representatives at more and more universities are partnering with SOS—East Carolina University and Texas A&M are looking at passing legislation in the fall—and the organization is picking up a fair share of media attention, too.

“Given that SOS started with two kids and two cell phones, this is beyond expectations,” Wendt says. “The fact that it has already exceeded our wildest dreams this quickly: That’s nothing short of phenomenal.”