Dorm safety

Mariellen Jacobs started an awareness campaign called “Rail Against the Danger” or RAD, after her son’s injury. She contacted the University System of Georgia and visited college campuses to share Clark’s story and photos showing him hospitalized, on a ventilator with his head fully bandaged. During one summer, mother and son attended all of the freshman orientation sessions at Georgia Tech to talk about rails.

During a visit to Georgia College in Milledgeville, the Jacobs’ presentation got the attention of Larry Christenson, the school’s executive director of university housing. In his 35 years working in student housing, Christenson said, falling out bed was rarely discussed.

“In my 35 years, I can only think of two accidents reported to me, but those were relatively minor injuries,” he said. He believes Georgia is the first state mandating the rails for college beds.

Thousands of injuries each year are linked to bunk beds, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Injury Prevention. Dr. Randall Loder, an orthopedic surgeon at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, co-authored the study with a medical student. The study found 639,700 emergency department visits, including 8,200 that occurred at schools, stemmed from bunk bed injuries — falls and other incidents — between 2006 and 2015.

Christenson, who previously chaired an advisory group on student housing, made bed rails a priority. Other college leaders agreed. College-owned fraternity and sorority houses are included, Christenson said.

Colleges and universities were notified in April of the change and began purchasing and installing the barriers on beds, according to the University System. Any student who doesn’t want the rail on a lofted bed must sign a waiver stating he or she knows the risks.

“The safety and well-being of our students is of paramount importance to the University System of Georgia and its 26 institutions,” the University System said in a statement. “These new guidelines will help ensure a safer living environment for students and we are thankful for the strong partnership all stakeholders provided during this process.”

Additionally, the days of students or parents building their own beds, or purchasing one from a local store and bringing it to campus, are over.

“It’s too hard to regulate,” Christenson explained. “It’s either what we provide or one from a company we approve.”

Jacobs has contacted the Consumer Product Safety Commission in hopes rails will one day come with any bed purchase. The manufacturers make the rails, but they are usually an additional cost for institutions.

Clark Jacobs, now 24, still suffers lingering effects from his traumatic brain injury, including fatigue. He takes two or three classes a semester at Tech, and hopes to complete his mechanical engineering degree in the spring.

The path to his degree has been longer than Clark planned, but he and his family are grateful for his continued strides.

“Would you stop wearing a bike helmet? Would you stop wearing a seat belt? No,” Mariellen Jacobs said. “It’s not worth the risk.”

AJC 2016 Georgia Tech student Clark Jacobs hangs out in his room at the Kappa Sigma fraternity house following his return to school after being seriously injured when he fell out of his bunk bed. He still suffers lingering effects.