SMU Student Found Dead In His Room-12/21/06	Article
	Jacob Stiles	Potent Painkiller Blamed in SMU Student's Death-12/06	Article
	December 2006	Dad assails SMU police in son's death-6/9/07	Article
	Southern Methodist University	Did SMU get it wrong?-7/2/07	Article
	SMU Campus addressing issues	Stiles family still searching for answers-12/04/07	Article
	Article Summaries and Excerpts Below	Does this need to happen to Jacob and others

SMU Student Found Dead In His Room

Jack Fink                                              Top of  page                           Article
Reporting

(CBS 11 News) DALLAS An SMU student was found dead in his room on Saturday.

Reported that 20-year-old sophomore, Jacob Stiles, was discovered dead at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house, located on campus, at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon.by his fraternity brothers.

 

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Frat Culture takes Another Life                                        Top of  page

Reported that Jacob died of a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs.

 Source: The Dallas Morning News

Sophomore Jacob Stiles of Naperville was found dead in his fraternity house in December.

Potent Painkiller Blamed in SMU Student's Death          

By Jason Trahan and Holly Hacker          Top of  page                       Article

Reported additional facts regarding Jacob's death as result of the combination of alcohol and fentanyl a rare and expensive painkiller sometimes taken in the form of a lollipop.

 "What's really nasty about fentanyl [is] it's a more potent narcotic than heroin or morphine -- up to 100 times," Dr. Klein- schmidt said. "People can have overdoses and not know what they've gotten themselves into."  Fentanyl has been linked in the last few years to hundreds of overdose deaths around the country.

E-mail jtrahan@dallasnews.com and hhacker@dallasnews.com

Dec 4, 2006 8:42 pm US/Central

Dad assails SMU police in son's death           

He says leads not pursued aggressively; chief defends inquiry

 08:09 AM CDT on Saturday, June 9, 2007            Top of  page             Article

By TIARA M. ELLIS / The Dallas Morning News
tellis@dallasnews.com

Reported that Jacob's parents questioned whether campus police fully investigated the case.  Jacob's father said "text messages indicate one of his son's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers provided him with drugs the night before a narcotic and alcohol mix killed the 20-year-old in December."   "We want something to happen with this investigation, and we want the truth to come out," said Tom Stiles.

Did SMU get it wrong?                            

George Henson, ghenson@smu.edu                Top of  page                   Article

Issue date: 7/2/07 Section: Opinion

 SMU Professor George Henson questioned the University's reaction to a series of substance abuse deaths involving alcohol and other drugs.

Within days after Jake's death, Dr. Jim Caswell -- then VP of Student Affairs, as well as an SMU alum, and distinguished alumnus of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity -- told The Dallas Morning News that the university considered Jake's death to be "isolated" and that drug use was not "a chapter-wide problem," adding that the case had been "resolved to [their] satisfaction."

"The facts, however, don't support Caswell's claim. Just three weeks before the 19-year-old Naperville, Ill. sophomore died, another SAE member had barely survived a near-fatal overdose at a different SAE party."

The author then detailed two other recent deaths as SMU and tragedies from other campuses in a plea for SMU official to effectively address the issue.

About the writer:

George Henson is a Spanish professor. He can be reached at ghenson@smu.edu.

Stiles family still searching for answers

Laura Murray, Contributing Writer, lmurray@smu.edu

Issue date: 12/4/07                            Top of  page                         Article

Reported that twelve months after Jacob's death, his parents still do not have a police report of his death.

"The Stiles family hired its own forensics doctor to review the findings of the autopsy report. According to the family, the report was misinterpreted to make the story what SMU wanted it to be. The forensics doctor said that he needed the police report to give a proper evaluation and has never heard of not being able to obtain the report. Henson says the university rushed to label the death an "isolated incident" to "control the information and establish the narrative.""

"The bottom line is, we do not really know what happened to Jacob," Mrs. Stiles said.

"Since SMU is a private school, it is not required to release any information under the Freedom of Information Act. The Stiles family may never get the police report on their son's death."

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