One college student is dead and two are injured after an accident on Lewis & Clark College’s undergraduate campus in Portland Monday night.
According to accounts from Portland Fire & Rescue and the college, six students attached hammocks to free-standing columns near the area of the campus’s Estate Garden and outdoor swimming pool. One of the columns fell, bringing hammocks and students down with it. Emergency crews were called to the campus around 8:15 p.m. on Monday — the first day of the fall semester.
Emergency responders confirmed when they arrived at the campus that one of the students, a 19-year-old man, had died. Two other students, both18-year-old women, were injured and taken to the hospital where they are recovering, according to Lewis & Clark. The college has not released any of the students’ names.
Caution tape surrounds the area around Lewis & Clark College’s swimming pool and lower Estate Garden on Aug. 30, 2022. One student died and two were injured Monday night when a free-standing column collapsed. Investigators learned that several hammocks were attached to the column when it collapsed.
Meerah Powell / OPB
“I am a parent myself and I, along with the entire Lewis & Clark community, am devastated by this loss,” Lewis & Clark President Robin Holmes-Sullivan wrote in a statement to the campus community Tuesday afternoon. “My heart goes out to his family and friends. We will do everything we can to support our students recovering in the hospital and those on campus who have been impacted by this tragedy.”
Lewis & Clark had about 2,100 students enrolled in its College of Arts & Sciences last fall, according to data from the college. Along with its undergraduate programs, the college in Portland’s west hills is also home to a law school and a graduate school of education.
Holmes-Sullivan said in her statement that there is space in the college’s Flanagan Chapel for anyone looking to reflect. She also said that grief counselors have been working with students, staff and faculty members. Holmes-Sullivan said she will let the campus community know if and when memorial services are planned for the student.
Students themselves are also reflecting on Monday night’s incident and the tragedy of a student dying on the first day of a new school year.
“I sympathize a lot with our first-year students who this is their first exposure to college life,” said Venus Edlin, Editor-in-Chief of Lewis & Clark’s campus newspaper, The Pioneer Log. “I think that it’s a really hard way to start things off.”
Edlin, who is a senior at the college, said they had a similar experience their first year at Lewis & Clark when a student died off-campus during orientation.
Edlin told OPB that what has been hard for some students is the way information has been shared about Monday night’s incident.
“I think this particular incident was really hard because I know most students were finding out about it not from the administration, not from the college, but from a local news station — a very short story — and for those students who were on campus as well, they might have seen or heard emergency responders arriving,” Edlin said.
They said they did not see any statement from the college until around 12:35 a.m., “which was four hours later,” Edlin said.
On Tuesday morning, caution tape surrounded the part of campus near Lewis & Clark’s outdoor swimming pool area where the brick column collapsed.
Much of that area was quiet on Tuesday, with a few students sitting in the nearby Estate Garden, working on laptops, writing in notebooks and taking phone calls.
“In one sense, it’s kind of business as usual, unfortunately, because what can you do besides go about your classes?” Edlin said.
In other parts of campus, college activities continued on the second day of the fall semester, with some classes doing icebreaker activities outside and others appearing already deep into lectures inside campus buildings.
This week is Lewis & Clark’s “Welcome Week,” where a multitude of campus events and meet-and-greets are scheduled to get students excited for the new semester.
Edlin pointed out that students lying in hammocks around the Portland campus is a common activity.
“I’ve seen that quite frequently, all the time. I’ve done it myself with my friends,” they said. “So for that to end in the way it has is quite alarming.”
They said the area of the Estate Garden in particular is a very common area for students to put up hammocks. Edlin said a big question for them and other students is how stable old structures and buildings are on campus.
“Was this something that was avoidable if there were checks to make sure that that column was stable? Is that applicable to other areas of campus?” Edlin wondered. “Those sorts of questions come to my mind.”