monday, October 6, 2003
news
the university daily kansar
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SAFETY: University has higher rate of accidental falls
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Those injuries included car accidents, falls, drowning and violent crimes.
weinhausen was the second KU student to die after falling from a residence hall in the past 10 years. On April 24, 1994, Scott McWhorter died after falling out of a window on the fourth floor of Corbin. He had a blood alcohol content of .19, more than twice the legal limit, according to an article in The University Daily Kansan.
Police said McWhorter, then a Dallas freshman, kicked the screen out of the window, possibly while sleepwalking.
Matthew Ward, then Kingman freshman, was also intoxicated when he fell from a window on the eighth floor of Hashinger Hall on May 15, 2001, landing on the third-floor roof. Witnesses in the police report said he had drunk eight to nine beers and a rum and Coke before the fall.
Saad Saifeddine said alcohol was not a part of his fall. The Casablanca, Morocco, junior fell off a ledge on the fifth floor of McCollum Hall onto a first-floor balcony on Oct. 19, 2001.
Saifeddine went into a coma for 24 hours after the fall and said he could not remember what had happened. He said he did remember, however, that he had not been drinking for several hours before the accident. He remembered walking into the room sober and did not drink more afterward.
The three-story fall broke Safeeddine's right shoulder, two ribs and a vertebra. For three weeks, Safeeddine was in a back brace and could not walk. He stayed with friends who cared for him and had to drop out of classes that semester.
Saifeddine said his friends later told him he had crawled out the window to help a smoker who could not get back into the room. He didn't know if that student had been drinking. As he pushed the man back into the window, Saifeddine slipped, he said.
HALLACCIDENTS
Because he did not have insurance, Saffedine said, he could not receive physical therapy and the bones in his ribs and back healed incorrectly. He said he couldn't sit still for more than half an hour before he started hurting, which had made doing homework and sitting through classes painful.
Smoking also led to Vanessa Buess' fall from the fourth story of McCollum in November of last year.
Five KU students have fallen from residence halls in the past 10 years. They include:
April 1994
Scott McWhorter, Dallas freshman, died after falling out of a fourth-floor window in Corbin Hall.
Police suspected he had been sleepwalking. His blood alcohol level was.19.
May 2001
Matthew Ward, Kingman freshman, fell out of an eighth-floor window onto a roof on the third floor of Hashinger Hall. He was treated for a shattered left heel and two broken ankles.
Witnesses in a police report said he drank about eight beers and a rum and Coke before the fall.
October 2001
Buess said she spent the evening of Nov. 9, 2002, with friends
Saad Saifeddine, Casablanca
Morocco, freshman, fall off a ledge on the fifth floor of McCollum Hall onto a first-floor balcony. He broke two ribs, his right shoulder and a vertebra. He said he had been drinking that night, but was sober at the time of the fall.
Flowers lay on the grass in front of Oliver Hall where Mount Prospect, III., freshman, Eric J. Wellhausen fell from the seventh floor on Sept. 12. Police received an emergency call from an Oliver resident at 2:06 a.m. and arrived within two minutes. Paramedics performed CPR before rushing Wellhausen to Lawrence Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Vanessa Buess, Wichita freshman, fell while smoking a cigarette on a fifth-floor ledge in McCollum Hall onto a third floor roof. She broke a bone in her left heel, left hand and her left pelvis. A witness in the police report said she had been drinking and smoking marijuana. September 2003
Buess said smokers used ledges to avoid making multiple trips downstairs.
Eric Wellhausen, Mount Prospect ill., freshman, died after falling from a ledge on the seventh floor of Oliver Hall. He had been drinking earlier that evening and police suspect he had been smoking on the ledge.
"I wouldn't say it's a rare thing," she said. "I know I was not the only one."
Buess said one of the bones in her hand was so small that it had to be replaced with a metal screw. Because of her injuries, she had to give up gymnastics.
John Nowak/Kansan
Her injuries included broken bones in her left heel, left pelvis and left hand. She was bed-ridden for several weeks while her pelvis healed before she began physical therapy. She could not complete her classes that semester, but did return to the University second semester. She has since returned to her hometown of Wichita, where she is a sophomore at Wichita State University.
Buess said she was wearing flip-flops and one of them began to slip. She tried to keep the shoe from falling with her foot and lost her balance.
"I had already gone up and down the stairs to smoke so often that evening," she said recently. "I didn't want to do that anymore. It was convenient to sit on the ledge and smoke."
in Brett Arnold's room on the fifth floor of McCollum Hall. Arnold and Buess had smoked marijuana and Buess had been drinking Bacardi rum, according to Arnold's statement in police reports. Buess admitted to police she had been drinking, but denied smoking marijuana.
Buess said she was considering returning to her room in Jayhawker Towers when she decided to have one last cigarette. She climbed out the window to smoke.
Baylor 0
Colorado 1
 Iowa State 0
Kansas 5
Kansas State 0
Missouri 1
Nebraska 0
Oklahoma 0
Oklahoma State 1
Texas 0
Texas A&M 0
Texas Tech 0
The University of Kansas is the only school in the Big 12 to have more than one accidental fall from a residence hall in the past 10 years.
Big 12 comparisons
The danger does prevent some smokers, like ninth-floor McCollum resident Brandon Hill, from climbing onto the ledges.
"I've thought about it," the Wichita sophomore said, "but I don't want to slip and fall nine floors to my death."
Officials decided to ban smoking based on student needs, Stoner said, because only seven percent of students identified themselves as smokers and even some of them requested non-smoking floors. He also said the smoking issue began to cause roommate complaints when people who identified themselves as non-smokers began smoking in
University residence halls banned smoking last fall. Before that, the University had smoking floors in McCollum, Oliver, Hashinger and GSP halls and Jayahawk Towers, Stouffer Place and Sunflower Apartments.
the room.
Some students think the University should bring the floors back.
"The fact of the matter is 99 percent of students are over 18 and cigarettes are legal for them," Buess said. "Kids are going to smoke. There should be smoking floors."
Marlesa Roney, vice provost for student success, said she would not support a plan to allow smoking in the residence halls. Health dangers of smoking and possible fire hazards made
smoke-free halls the safest option, she said.
"We would not want to set up an environment to encourage picking up bad habits," she said.
Roney is on the board that meets today. She wants to promote discussion about risky behavior among students, she said. If students were aware of what peers were doing and not afraid to talk about dangerous behavior with each other and authorities, she said, students could affect behavior through peer pressure.
Roney said she did not want Wellhausen to become "the poster boy" for preventing dangerous behavior out of respect for those who loved him. But she said she hoped the tragedy would help students realize they need to look out for each other.
"I want students to have rich lives, but I want them to live," she said. "We want to try to create an environment where students can help each other take responsible risks."
-Edited by Neeley Spellmeier
MEMORY: Friend tried CPR
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Roberts gave Wellhausen CPR, but she couldn't revive him. She began to realize the gravity of the situation.
"We held him." Roberts said.
"We tried to make him talk."
A residence assistant asked Roberts to move aside. When paramedics arrived shortly after, they began giving CPR. Roberts watched, helpless.
"His whole body just jumped," Roberts said. "It shook. I don't know what it was, but I think the paramedics knew."
Roberts and those watching were then asked to go upstairs. She watched from a window on the seventh floor as the paramedics worked on Welhausen.
Although RAs didn't tell her Wellhausen was dead until about 3 a.m., she knew before then.
Paramedics moved Wellhausen to the ambulance and took him to Lawrence Memorial Hospital. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.
“There were people taking pictures of him,” Roberts said. “That’s when I knew he was dead.”
Eric J. Wellhausen, Mount Prospect, Ill., freshman, was 18 years old.
Richard Johnson, dean of students, called Wellhausen's parents early in the morning. Wellhausen's father, John, was sleeping.
Family remembers
"My first thought was that someone was pranking me," Welihua recalled. "Because, you know, he's away at college. But then it was entirely too serious, and I knew it had to be real."
Wellhausen and his wife, Donna, made travel arrangements to come to Lawrence and arrived at about 12:30 p.m. on Friday.
John Wellhausen remembers his son as a young man filled with potential and ambition who was excited to go to college and begin the rest of his life.
"I can't tell you how psyched he was to go to KU." Wellhausen said. "He knew it was a new beginning from high school."
Wellhausen said that after high school, Eric had planned on joining the Marines. He changed his mind and decided to go to the University of Kansas after he and some friends borrowed his dad's car and took a road trip to Lawrence.
Halfway through the summer, Wellhausen changed his mind again and decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. He was in the deferred entry program of the Army, and planned to attend the University for two years before serving in the Army for another two years.
Wellhausen said he wasn't ready to comment on the circumstances of his son's death or the University's responsibility. He said he wasn't aware that students had fallen out of University windows or off of ledges until he read the articles about his son's death.
Wellhausen said he was proud that his son scored a 27 on the ACTs, noting that he scored a perfect 36 on the science portion of the test.
His son liked to DJ, take photos and fish, and he always had a lot of friends.
"I looked at the ledges when we dropped him off," Wellhausen said. "But nobody said anything about anything."
"I had a lot of fun with him, too," Wellhausen said. "We got along real well."
He said the family had always been close and was doing all right.
"Today, we're all in the same state." Wellhausen said. "We realize that he's gone. It seems like a senseless and tragic death, and we're doing a lot more praying."
"There were people taking pictures of him. That's when I knew he was dead."
Kirsten Roberts freshman
"It's just so weird," he said. "We're trying to get back to living our everyday lives, which we know he would have wanted. But you just break down crying. You can't help that."
Joe Petermann met Eric Wellhausen at Rolling Meadows High School in Rolling Meadows, Ill. The two played ultimate frisbee together and eventually became friends.
The last night
As much as Wellhausen tries to be strong, at times, his toughness eludes him.
Wellhausen and Petermann left for Last Call between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. Both he and Wellhausen had two or three beers at the bar, the only drinks they'd had all night, he said.
Petermann said that on their last night together he and Wellhausen went to Last Call, 729 New Hampshire St., for a soccer party with Roberts and several other residents of Oliver's seventh floor.
Petermann and Wellhausen decided to attend the University, and became roommates in Oliver.
Last Call was featuring $1.50 pitchers. Patrons had to be 18 to enter and 21 to drink.
Roberts said someone must have bought a pitcher and allowed Wellhausen to drink, because he didn't have a fake ID.
A bartender at Last Call, who
wished to remain anonymous, said employees were kicking out underage drinkers all night.
Trent Glass, general manager of Last Call, said the bar passed two police checks during the night.
After about two hours at Last Call, they decided to take SafeRide back to Oliver.
"We were having a good time." Petermann said, "but we just wanted to leave."
SafeRide dropped them off at about 1 a.m., and they went to their room on the seventh floor.
Just a few minutes after 1 a.m., Wellhausen walked into Brandon Buchanan's room. Buchanan, a Wichita freshman, lived across the hall.
"He came in my room and aske if I wanted to smoke a cigarette." Buchanan said. "He was in his boxers and said he didn't know where he was going to smoke."
Buchanan said he didn't think Wellhausen was drunk, but he said he didn't look entirely sober.
"He looked pretty normal," he said. "He was acting really goofy and funny. He came in the room laughing and smiling. He always did that, but this time was more than he usually did."
Wellhausen said he didn't want to go downstairs to smoke because he didn't have on any pants. Buchanan decided not to smoke with Wellhausen, and Wellhausen left the room.
Petermann said Wellhausen crawled out of the window to smoke his cigarette on the ledge outside at about 1:30 a.m. Petermann saw Wellhausen's head through the window.
"He went out there once before with our friend," Petermann said. "They were just having a good time and joking around out there."
Petermann went into the hallway to talk with friends. He would never see his roommate
alive again.
Buchanan sent Petermann to see if it was Wellhausen.
Thirty minutes later, people began running through the hallways, shouting that someone had fallen off the building.
"We said it couldn't be because we had just seen him," Buchanan said. "Finally his roommate went down and checked. He went towards Eric, and as I saw him from the window, he just put his head down."
At Oliver, Counseling and Psychological Services spoke with students into the morning.
"Everyone was walking around crying." Buchanan said. "Everyone was up until 5:30 or 6, just crying and holding on to each other."
Now Petermann lives by himself. There are no sheets on the top bunk of his bed and few posters on the wall.
He said Petermann was crying the entire time.
Wellhausen's parents gave their son's computer to Petermann after Eric died.
Petermann said he appreciated the kindness from residents of Oliver Hall.
— Edited by Doyle Murphy
"He was just beginning to realize what he was capable of."
"A lot of people have been really nice to me, really supportive," he said. "It feels like a big family."
John Wellhausen has one memory of his son that stands out from the rest.
"His graduation party was in June," Wellhausen said. "The best picture I have is during the party. He was sitting back in his chair with a huge grin on his face because he knew he had gotten this far, and he knew he was going to school.
"Elixir" by Lyda Wellhausen, September 2003
To Pour Your Ageless outlook On my soul Would be an elixir. Silly Social mixer, Your innocence Juxtaposed with my Hardness, your Sweetness with my Indignance. Pour your smile To wash away My frown, Your wisdom On my stupidity, Your patience on My hurriedness Your calm on My anxiety.
Now you know my secrets
Now you see me, too.
When the moon orbits
When crickets sing,
When I see the sky,
When clouds float by,
I love you.
Sweet, kind one.
And everyone you love
Will bathe in a
Million rays of your
Golden sun;
With the strength
Of a soldier
You methed the ice away
Oh Eric,
It is hard to say
What is meant to be,
But for all I hoped
You would learn in school,
Look at what you taught me
Lynda Wellhausen, sister of Eric Wellhausen
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