MIT DEATH HIGHLIGHTS DORM WOES

Howard Yuh, a graduate resident tutor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, heard the screams echoing down the fifth floor of his dormitory:
"Help! Does anyone know CPR?"

Yuh sprinted into room 509. There, sprawled on a mattress, he found MIT
student Richard Guy's lifeless body.

He pumped Guy's chest, but it was too late. Guy was dead, asphyxiated from
inhaling nitrous oxide to get high in a dorm room littered with drugs. When
he found Guy's body last Wednesday, Yuh was responsible for overseeing his
floor of Walcott Hall, known to students as "the wild side." Here, the walls
are coated in black paint, the fluorescent lights dimmed with purple film.

"It has a reputation of beating to a different drummer," MIT spokesman Ken
Campbell said.

Apparently, Yuh didn't know about the LSD, marijuana, mushrooms, and
amphetamines stashed in the room. But plenty of other students did. MIT
officials called the tank of nitrous oxide a "community canister" from which
students inhaled for a fleeting high. And it was clear to investigators who
found packaging materials in the dorm room that it was center of a campus
drug operation. MIT police on Sept. 3 charged a student and her boyfriend
with seven counts of possession with intent to distribute.

Susan Mosher, a senior, and her boyfriend, Rene Ruiz, who graduated from MIT
last year, lived in the room. The two, who are the only ones charged so far
in connection with the alleged drug dealing at the dorm room, will be
arraigned today in Middlesex District Court.

Guy's death, and the discovery of drugs in the room, highlights how
ineffective resident advisers can be when it comes to finding out about drug
havens on campus.

Yuh, a 22-year-old nuclear engineering student, is still a graduate resident
tutor, and MIT officials say they have no reason to remove him from his
position. In fact, MIT spokesman Robert Sales said Yuh acted heroically the
night Guy died.

"He spent the rest of the night counseling students, commiserating with
them, and helping them through," Sales said. Yuh declined to comment. MIT,
like most campuses, keeps a graduate resident tutor on every floor, and two
"housemasters" -- faculty members -- in every residence hall. In all, there
are 70 graduate resident tutors at MIT.

In exchange for watching after students, they get a free room and a stipend
for food, Sales said. They undergo a three-day training session on
everything from how to spot drug use to techniques for approaching
suspicious-looking students. Graduate resident tutors are supposed to
contact campus police whenever they suspect drug use among students, but
it's often difficult to recognize, said MIT Police Chief Anne Glavin.

"It's not something that's lying there on the surface," Glavin said.

"Sometimes you stumble across it, literally." Which is exactly what happened
in the case of Guy, 22, of Mission Viejo, Calif. Another student, Alison
Novak, found him dead when she entered the room to feed a cat.

Though Guy's death has been ruled an accident, Glavin said the investigation
into how he obtained the drugs continues.