PULLMAN, Wash. — Many students at Washington State University said they wanted school administration to emphasize rules around drinking culture at the school.
Samuel Martinez was a 19-year-old Alpha Tau Omega fraternity member. The freshman died in the campus fraternity house overnight Tuesday from what police believe was an alcohol-related incident.
"It's just like a nightmare," said WSU senior Caitlin Boss.
Although the school teaches orientation classes to new students about the dangers of alcohol abuse, Boss said she believes there needs to be more education.
"I really think that schools need to hammer it home in how serious (alcohol abuse) could be," she said.
Boss and other students said the school should require educational courses about alcohol use every semester, have stricter rules about underage drinking and have more dorm checks and campus police patrols.
"I hope the effect it does have is that the university will have a stricter rule on Greek life to make sure these underage people aren't getting into these kinds of things and putting themselves at risk," said Luis Guillen, a Junior.
"Hopefully, this just brings awareness here to what happened, because the biggest thing is not keeping it quiet and making sure that people know and (Martinez's) story is told so that this doesn't happen to other students," said Rosa Michaelis, a Senior.
KREM reached out to WSU leaders for a statement on possible plans to address the incident with students but did not get a response.