Parents are calling to put bars on the windows of the fire escapes to prevent drunk students from hurting themselves. Putting up bars won’t stop drunken teens from doing stupid things.
Via the LMT:
The parents of Washington State University student Matthew Gray, who fell from his second-story dorm window early Thursday morning, are asking university officials to add restraints to fire egress windows inside WSU residence halls.
“I’m doing this so no other parents have to make the decision to let their child die, or let them fight to save their life,” Matthew’s father, Jim Gray, said.
Matthew, 18, was intoxicated when he fell from his second-story dorm window at WSU’s Duncan Dunn residence hall Thursday, according to Gray.
He was taken to Pullman Regional Hospital with a severe head injury, and later flown to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane and then Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
“Even if you provide aggressive treatment, you know your child is not going to come back the same,” Gray said. “No other parent should have to do this. It doesn’t matter that my kid was drinking. You should not be able to fall out those windows.”
According to Lewiston Tribune archives, at least nine falls have occurred on the WSU campus since the fall 2012 semester, but only two of those involved falls from windows. One was a fall from Orton Hall’s 11th story in 2012. The other was a 19-year-old woman who fell from a second-story window while vomiting at the Delta Gamma sorority house.
The dorm windows instantly raised a red flag when he saw them two weeks ago while dropping his son off in Pullman, Gray said.
“The windows were wide open, and there’s a radiator in front of the window with a cover on it, and it acts like a window seat,” Gray said. “The window is tall enough and opens wide enough, if someone sat on that and leaned back, they would fall right out.”
At one point, he said he even joked with his son not to fall out.
“He laughed,” Gray said.