What One University Changed After a Freshman Fell Out of His Dorm Window

Last August a Washington State University freshman fell two stories from his dorm-room window. Matthew Gray had been on the campus just three days, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Evergreen. Gray had made his bed into a loft and moved it against the window, said Phil Weiler, the vice president for marketing and communication, and during the night, Gray rolled out of bed and through the window. He was seriously injured.

It was “a horrific situation,” Weiler said, and the university was criticized for failing to protect the student’s safety. So a team — made up of everyone who could possibly help craft a solution, Weiler said — was pulled together. Staff members from facilities, housing, dining, and student affairs were all asking the same question: Could the accident have been prevented?

The answer was not simple.

Colleges and universities nationwide have experienced similar crises over students’ falling from roofs, balconies, and windows. In 2018 students died or were injured after tumbling from windows at Northwestern, Syracuse, Temple, and other universities. What was once considered a freak accident is now a genuine safety concern that institutions try to plan for.

But the concern is not talked about openly, said Mark E. Briggs, a co-founder of the Safety Management Resources Corporation, which helped Washington State assess its safety needs.

The company performs such assessments for government entities, educational and health institutions, and other industries. But before he helped found it, Briggs was the risk manager at the University of Illinois for 10 years and then the chief risk officer at Ohio State University. At the corporation Briggs said he works daily with institutions of higher education.

Any campuses that haven’t looked specifically at this aspect of risk preparedness, Briggs said, are succumbing to “ignorance, in the truest sense of the word,” either unwittingly or because they are afraid of what they’ll find.

Many college buildings, due to their age and architecture, Briggs said, are susceptible to modern code violations that can make accidents more likely. But among all institutions, he said, the greatest factor contributing to falls is alcohol consumption. That can also take the problem off campus, to the neighboring apartment buildings and houses where some students live. That means the institutions must find ways to police students even when they leave the grounds.

“Incidents of students’ falling out of windows, off balconies, off rooftops on campus buildings is very low,” Briggs said. But “when you combine it with off campus, now you’ve got a very real problem that quite frankly nobody has quantified.”

Multifaceted Solutions

Many colleges try to provide explicit safety instructions on their campuses, but even that doesn’t always work. In 2012 a visitor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor fell out of a window in Mary Markley Hall. “We can communicate to students,” said Amir Baghdadchi, senior associate director of the university’s housing administration. The university can’t always control what visitors do, he said.

In response to the accident, in which an 18-year-old man from Ohio fell 43 feet from the dorm’s sixth floor, Baghdadchi said Michigan reiterated its “proactive” dorm-safety policies, revised instructions for modular furniture, and looked for ways to reduce overall risk.

Baghdadchi said it is “always a priority to work on window safety,” and the university re-emphasized the guard-rail requirement on lofted beds.

Safety Management’s report on Washington State identified areas for safety improvements based on inspections of the facilities and interviews of students and staff members. There are many possible solutions for the institution, Briggs said, but not all of them are feasible because “everybody has limited resources.”

Some of those solutions, according to the official report, include decreasing the size of certain windows and how wide they can open, and placing security screens on all windows with access to dorm roofs. Most of the recommendations, though, concern policies and procedures, such as requiring lofted beds to have railings (a decision once left to the student), prohibiting beds from being placed against windows, and providing more awareness training “related to the prevention of unintentional falls.”

Inspections, Briggs said, almost always reveal the need for multifaceted solutions because facilities, procedures, and culture all contribute to potential accidents.

‘New Life Skills’

Weiler, the Washington State official, said that while it’s easy to blame the students as thoughtless, the university has a responsibility to them.

“These are people who are probably living on their own for the first time,” Weiler said. “There’s all sorts of new life skills that they need to become familiar with.”

Weiler said colleges should talk more openly about the problem, reflecting on two incidents he saw while working at other institutions. At a university in Illinois, Weiler said, the institution was aware of a party tradition at some nearby private apartments, a tradition that often ended in disaster. But not enough was done to mitigate the dangers, and a student fell from a roof and died. When Weiler was working at the University of Oregon, he said, a student fell from the roof of a fraternity house and was killed.

“Every university I’ve worked at, this has been an issue,” Weiler said. “It’s really horrible and tragic, but it continues to happen.” He said colleges must teach students to be more cognizant of their surroundings.

Washington State is instituting new policies for the new academic year. Furniture can no longer be placed near windows, and lofted beds must have railings. Resident advisers will inspect rooms soon after move-in, and will conduct more safety and awareness training.

Last August’s fall was Washington State’s first such incident, Weiler said, but “one accident is one too many.”

“You’ve got young people who have great potential and who are about to launch their lives, and it’s just a momentary lapse of judgment,” Weiler said. “It’s tragic because it’s just a waste of potential.”

Follow Teghan Simonton on Twitter at @teghan_simonton, or email her at teghan.simonton@chronicle.com.