The tragic death of Ricardo Petrillo over the weekend once again highlights an insidious and expanding problem at this University. Added to last winter’s tragedy in the Adirondacks, the shower cam scandal and other lower profile and underreported incidents, this most recent horrible event has to leave students and parents stunned by the lack of discipline here.

College students will be college students but why does this institution suffer such abnormal difficulties and losses?

Is it the odd (if not cozy) relationship between the resident assistants, Residential Life’s hierarchy and its too powerful and insulated domain?

Are the students watching the students most of the time? Check out who the “shower-vert” worked for.

Why is Residential Life so loosely run? What are its management’s credentials? What did they do before becoming Quinnipiac employees? Are the newest additions to this staff really an upgrade from previous housing oversight…”professionals”?

Why is there such inconsistency in the application of discipline and sanctions? Does monetary influence dictate who goes or stays? Such findings would add great understanding to this profoundly serious malaise.

Do energetic efforts to maintain and now restore the declining image of the school detract from other deeper, structural needs? Continuing to ignore the substance abuse problems at Quinnipiac will only assure continued turmoil and heartbreak?

Ask the keepers of the statistics (assuming they are kept) for the real facts and statistics related to drug and alcohol incidents — then published them! Existing and prospective students and parents simply must know this information before they commit anything to the Q experience.

It’s time for accountability and a top to bottom housecleaning of the dysfunctional Quinnipiac Residential “Life” bureaucracy. Ask anyone, especially the Hamden Police Department. Their problems can no longer be swept away. The tragic proof of that lies in last weekend’s awful event.