Cougster

WSU student Stuart John Robertson died early Saturday morning. He was last seen leaving from a party at the Chinook Apartments.

From KXLY:

Officer believe the student, 21-year-old Stuart John Robertson accidentally fell 40 feet to his death off a cliff near an apartment complex, a short distance away from Bishop Boulevard.

Police received a call at 5:30 Saturday morning to investigate an unconscious person found along side the road.

In their investigation, officers determined that Robertson might have been the victim of a hit-and-run. Troopers from the Washington State Patrol made the trip from Spokane to help Pullman Police investigate the possibility of a hit-and-run scenario.

Police believe Robertson began walking near the cliffs and accidentally fell off of them.

An autopsy will be performed in the next few days to determine Robertson’s exact cause of death. Robertson was a viticulture/enology major originally from Bend, Oregon.

Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.

WSU QB Marshall Lobbestael was nailed for MIP over the weekend. Now this is not a shocking event, 19 college kid getting an MIP, but the circumstances… according to reports he was nailed for it at the Pullman Police station parking lot after passing out in the back of truck.

Sophomore Marshall Lobbestael, 19, was arrested after officers say they found him passed out in a pickup truck at the police station.

Pullman officers were in contact with Lobbestael twice on Saturday. The first run-in happened on College Hill when officers saw him carrying an unconscious woman. They took her into custody for MIP.

About an hour after that is when they found Lobbestael in the pickup truck at the station. They were able to wake him and arrest Lobbestael for MIP.

WSU’s Sports Information Director says Lobbestael has been suspended from the team while Head Coach Paul Wulff looks into the case.

Lesson here, get a van with no windows.

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At 18 people are considered adults in eyes of the law in almost all cases. It is often said if you can fight and die for your country why can’t you have a beer…well legally at least. Now about 100 college presidents want to examine changing the legal drinking age to 18. They are part of the Amethyst Initiative.

Here is an  AP story and then comments from WSU President Elson Floyd:
College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.
The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.
“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”
Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.
But even before the presidents begin the public phase of their efforts, which may include publishing newspaper ads in the coming weeks, they are already facing sharp criticism.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.

Rest of the article here

From KNDO/KNDU:

“I think that lowering the drinking age down to 18 won’t solve the problem, in fact i think it would expedite the problem,” said President Mark Emmert, University of Washington.
Emmert says there is no evidence that binge drinking increased when state drinking laws rose from 18 to 21.
“There’s issues of young people getting fake ID’s and the like to pretend they’re 21 instead of 18. If you make the drinking law 18 then you’ll have 16 year old pretending that they’re 18,” said Emmert.
Elson Floyd, President of Washington State University, also does not see reducing the drinking age as a problem solver.
“The real solution is going to require not only the engagement of colleges and universities but high schools and parents and just simply changing the behavior,” said Floyd.
Floyd says more and more students are coming to college with drinking experience.
“We have a growing number of students who participate in what’s referred to as binge drinking that is having five or more drinks in a single setting,” said Floyd.

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