EDITORIAL: WILL TRAGEDIES BE FORGOTTEN BY STUDENTS?

Sadly, Fire, Overdoses Were Similar To Past Incidents

Our View

Perhaps one of the reasons that so many tragedies seem to strike
college students is the fact that they lack collective memory. Every
four years or so, the tragic slate gets wiped clean as the students
who faced the tragedies move onward and new students without a hint
enter the cycle.

The weekend incidents at Penn State and Bloomsburg universities point
to two perpetual problems on campuses across the nation - drug abuse
and fire hazards. At Penn State, six young people overdosed on liquid
ecstasy, a popular "club drug" that is popping up with greater
frequency in the Centre Region. And at Bloomsburg, an early morning
house fire Sunday claimed the lives of three students.

Sadly, both are repeat performances. Although the victims are
different and the story line varies from older incidents, the results
are disturbingly reminiscent of the not-so-distant past.

At Bloomsburg on Sunday, three young men died in a fire at an
off-campus fraternity house that just a few months before had been
cited for fire code violations.

Six years may seem like yesterday to Jessica Kozloff, president of
Bloomsburg University, who in 1994 had the sad duty of addressing the
student body and several heartbroken parents after a fire leveled a
former fraternity house and killed five young people. But to the
current crop of college juniors and seniors, six years might seem like
eons ago.

Immediately after the 1994 fire, Kozloff and Bloomsburg town officials
tackled the issue head on, cracking down on fire-trap student housing
and stepping up enforcement of fire-safety codes (in that fire, none
of the smoke alarms in the house were operational, fire officials
later discovered).

But last October, a town codes inspector cited the Tau Kappa Epsilon
fraternity for a dozen violations, including a discharged fire
extinguisher, five electric heaters plugged into the house's
inadequate electrical system and a smoke alarm without a battery.

A January inspection found the house in compliance, but clearly fire
safety wasn't much of a concern before the inspection. And that house
is probably not the only one in the college town where fire safety has
been ignored.

At Penn State, the six young people were rushed Sunday from an
off-campus home to the hospital for an apparent overdose of liquid
ecstasy. Police suspect they intentionally took the drug (also known
as GHB), which has killed at least 58 people nationwide in recent
years and was recently made illegal under federal law.

Unfortunately, Penn State has a track record with GHB that the current
crop of students may have overlooked. In the summer of 1998, two
20-year-old Penn State students were found unconscious and
unresponsive in their Beaver Avenue apartment after taking some
ecstasy they whipped up at home using an Internet recipe.

At the time, GHB-related emergencies were rare, local police and
hospital officials said. In light of the Sunday incident, campus and
community authorities are raising concerns that ecstacy is a club drug
that is popping up more frequently in Centre County.

Efforts to warn college students about the potentially deadly drug
have stepped up since the 1998 incident. Apparently, there are quite a
few people who aren't listening to the warnings and as such are
flirting with tragedy.

The investigations continue into the fire and the overdoses, and there
is no telling at this point whether the students themselves were
responsible for the incidents. And to be honest, these wounds are
still far too tender to start laying blame and making harsh judgments.

But surely the high-profile nature of both cases will raise awareness
on these and other campuses.

Perhaps now, faced with a "real" ecstasy overdose, more students will
heed the warnings that this drug can do a lot of damage, even kill.
And sobered by the horrors of dying in a house fire, maybe more
students will be more diligent about fire safety.

The concern is whether that awareness will stick beyond a few
semesters and will save lives for years to come without the need for
painful reminders.