Despite New Rules, The Party's Not Over In Pullman -- Wild Parties At WSU Move From On Campus To Off Campus

PULLMAN - One minute, the 40 or so students were swilling beer at a triple kegger.

Minutes later, six of them lay strapped to bright orange stretchers as police, paramedics and red and blue lights swirled around them. Others sat on a curbside, nursing swollen ankles, bloody cuts and achy backs.

The second-story deck had collapsed, sending some tumbling 12 feet into a hillside at the apartment complex a few miles from Washington State University. Others dropped straight down into another crowded deck. None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

"Nobody was running around or jumping on the deck," one partygoer at the Friday night bash said as he raced from the apartment to make sure his friends were OK. "We weren't binge drinking."

Last year, university President Sam Smith declared the party was over at WSU after a beer-fueled riot on Greek Row. He banned drinking in public rooms in fraternities last year and said drinking on campus has declined since.

"They're saying all that to make the public image look better," said Kira Riznyk, 19, a sophomore, as she party-hopped on Greek Row with a friend. Alcohol, she said, "is everywhere."

Last week The Princeton Review ranked WSU among the top 10 party schools in the country.

And in the first week of school, police broke up at least a dozen student parties, including one that drew 2,000 students and one that led police on a chase through the rolling wheat fields that surround the college town.

Friday night alone, between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m., police ticketed 17 minors for drinking and logged seven complaints of noisy beer bashes in the town of 24,650.

The most serious incident came early Thursday morning, when police arrived at an apartment complex less than a mile from campus to find Kurt Leamer, 22, of Graham, Pierce County, sprawled on the rocky ground after he fell 45 feet from a balcony above. Leamer had been drinking all night. He is in serious condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. He was transferred from an Idaho hospital to be closer to his family.

`He wasn't breathing'

The reality of all the drinking hit Jason Bishop, 24, about 3 a.m. Thursday, when he watched Leamer, flip over the fifth-floor balcony.

Bishop looked over the skinny metal railing to a spot in the rocky dirt, littered with cigarette butts.

"I still don't know how it happened," he said, speaking softly.

After a long night of drinking, a small group of friends was sitting on the fifth-floor balcony of Bishop's apartment at 3 a.m. Leamer, who was sitting on the railing, started to stand up but instead fell backward.

"It was so slow," Bishop said. "You heard him hit the metal railing on the other balcony. Boing - it vibrated. It was quiet. Then a thud. I said, `That did not just happen.' And I flew down the stairs.

"He wasn't breathing. I put my hand on his back and called his name. `Wake up, wake up.' And then the police were there."

Bishop, who recently transferred to WSU from an Idaho school, looked out at the hills of yellow wheat fields that peek above the town.

"It's just a little wet island in the middle of nowhere," he said. "I'm sitting around here, and I have to tell you, I'm bored. There's just a beer in every hand. It just goes with the territory. I laugh when the (WSU) president says he can make a change."

As Bishop talked, music pumped from an apartment across the street where three young men stood outside on a balcony drinking from plastic cups.

On the street below was Evan Thomas, a fifth-year senior, who is convinced alcohol abuse has declined significantly since he arrived in Pullman. He drank heavily during his days in a fraternity but said he feels he has learned to drink responsibly.

"I'll probably only have six of these," Thomas said, pointing to the 24-pack of Busch Lite he was toting.

Six beers may seem like a lot, but Thomas was walking, not driving. And he made sure his friends were not driving, either. He's old enough to drink legally, and he wanted to celebrate a bit before he had to really start hitting the books to complete his chemical-engineering degree.

"We get such a bad rap with the riots and this (man falling off the balcony) happening," said Thomas, 23. "I don't see it."

When he was shown a handful of people hovering over three shiny kegs on a balcony just across the narrow street, Thomas said: "Maybe I just keep my head down and nose to the grindstone and don't notice it."

Parties under wraps

Several fraternity and sorority members sitting outside their houses Friday night said they adhered to the rules prohibiting alcohol. But some said the drinking now is simply less blatant than before.

Students don't walk down the street handing out fliers advertising parties as much as they used to. They don't stroll with beers in their hands. And gone are the wild parties on the front lawn. They're in the basement instead.

"Everything is just on the underground now. They have to hide it," said Ryan Weed, who lives in one of the few dozen private rentals tucked among the Greek houses, several feet from where the riot started last year.

The party was incognito Friday at the Delta Chi fraternity. Disco lights and loud bass leaked from a black tarp covering the basement veranda of the "black light toga party." Beer cans were strewn about inside as the sheet-clad brothers smoked and talked. Mark Schweitzer, a fraternity member who was dressed like Julius Caesar, said he has attended City Council meetings when the talk has focused on drinking.

"By pushing the drinking from fraternities, they push them onto small balconies," he said. "They cause the problems. Our house is equipped for a big party."

`Drinking is not down'

If you're looking for a party in Pullman, ask the cops. The drinking spills off campus and into their jurisdiction. They know that Greek Row and the broken glass and beer-can littered courtyards of the Campus Commons North apartment complex are sure to be teeming with thirsty college students - thousands of them - all in the mood to party.

"No, drinking is not down, contrary to what anyone says," said Pullman police officer Scott Patrick, who walks the College Hill beat. "There's still drinking going on in all the (fraternity and sorority) houses. I'd be a liar if I told you otherwise."

On Thursday, Patrick came across three 18-year-old sorority girls along Greek Row who were so drunk he had to take them into custody so they could sober up.

"It's a fallacy to say it's dry," said Patrick, who became a police officer 11 years ago after he graduated from WSU. "It's just displaced. Over time the problems aren't as rampant, but there's still (an alcohol) problem."

So why can't the enforcers of the law stymie the blatant abuse of alcohol?

"It's a societal problem," said Patrick. "It's not a police problem. We have limited resources. We try to do what we can do to keep things under control."

His partner, Andy Wilson, added: "When one of the local businesses offers to sell cases of beer for a penny over cost, that doesn't do anything to curb it."

Students arriving for the first day of classes last week found cases of Busch selling for $7.99 in some Pullman stores. They're so cheap that loose-can sales are pushing into the market for keg sales.

The officers know: They keep track of keg sales across town and jot notes in their little black books. They knew that three kegs were registered to the balcony party Friday night before the deck collapsed there.

Officers were nearby

Officers drove by the bash every hour and were nearby when the accident happened. But rather than sweep down on parties and throw throngs of drunken college students in jail, police take baby steps.

They ticket for excessive noise, for public urination. They try to keep parties under control.

Police work with apartment-complex managers and persuade them to enforce leases that forbid parties of more than 20 guests. The manager of the apartment building where the huge party was held last weekend levied $200 fines on 15 renters for violations.

"We try to deal with the small stuff on the fringes that allows the crowd to know we're there," said Pullman police Sgt. Chris Tennant.

The city police trade information with campus police. And last year, they started walking and bicycling on their beats all week long instead of just on the weekends. They beef up school-year patrols: There are 16 or 17 officers who work weekends rather than one or two.

"It's always a learning process," said Tennant, who has been on the Pullman police force for 17 years. "We have people who fall off balconies every other year. It's sad, but it's true."

Sgt. Dan Dornes, a soft-spoken, fatherly man, strolled through the courtyards of a 400-unit student-filled complex on the northeast hill to check out what appeared to be 400 parties under way. At one, five couples stood on a tiny balcony locking lips. Empty liquor bottles lined living-room windows. Groups of students marched from one unit to another.

Some hollered at Dornes, who didn't seem to notice.

But he looked at it all and sighed, "And this isn't even a football weekend."

Dionne Searcey's phone message number is 360-236-8268. Her e-mail address is dsearcey@seattletimes.com