Mason Pendrous’ death – a year on
Mason Pendrous lay dead in his room in student accommodation for up to four weeks. A year on, Sam Sherwood looks at the effect on the University of Canterbury and his family.
A death in student accommodation 12 months ago has sparked a major overhaul at University of Canterbury, with staff on-site 24/7 and more than double the number of residential assistants.
The first anniversary of Mason Pendrous’ death – in room 209 of Sonoda’s Hinoki Building – coincides with the final week students can sign up to stay at accommodation next year.
The changes were prompted by an independent investigation into why Pendrous lay undiscovered in his room for up to four weeks before being found at 10.50pm on September 23, 2019, and have the university’s vicechancellor feeling confident the tragic circumstances will not be repeated.
Investigations revealed Pendrous’ last communication was on August 24, when he messaged a school friend from Wellington after they played a video game together online.
The cause of his death was undetermined due to decomposition.
One year on, Pendrous’ step-father Anthony Holland told The Press he missed his ‘‘best mate’’ every day.
‘‘It’s been a shocker, not being able to ring him, hang out with him. He was a good bugger that did no harm to anybody. I wish every day he was here with me at least for him to ignore my texts.’’
The delay in finding Pendrous’ body created global headlines and led to a law change – a Code of Practice for Pastoral Care.
It also prompted an independent investigation by former High Court judge Kit Toogood, QC, who found the accommodation provider, Campus Living Villages (CLV), did not chase up concerns about Pendrous’ academic engagement and left no staff on site after an organisational restructure.
Toogood recommended the university and CLV consider changes including to make pastoral care and qualified residential staff numbers part of the accommodation agreement between the university and CLV, regular welfare checks for each resident’s room without cause, and having residential assistants (RAs) responsible for 25 to 30 students each.
University of Canterbury vicechancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey told The Press she took the recommendations in ‘‘good faith’’, and had acted on them.
The way in which the university saw the undergraduate year had been ‘‘reconceptualised’’ with a focus on the first year – recognising that the transition from high school to university came with a ‘‘whole lot of challenges’’.
The relationship between staff, RAs and first-year students had ‘‘changed completely’’, with ratios for first-year students to residential assistants starting at 8:1, up to 35:1 for postgraduate accommodation.
Before Pendrous’ death, the ratio at university hall was 42:1, first-year Ilam Apartments had 53:1 and Sonoda had 54:1, with Kirkwood having 16:1.
The university has also introduced a system where, with the first-year student’s permission, they can message either them or their contact person if they are not engaging with their studies.
The Covid-19 lockdown gave the university an opportunity to test their system. ‘‘[It] allowed us to see whether our students were engaged and to contact them, so we sent them a text message to find out how things are going, if they didn’t respond we followed it up and in a few cases phone calls were made,’’ de la Ray said.
Toogood’s report identified several failings at CLV that contributed to the delay in discovering Pendrous had died, including the closure of the CLV office at Sonoda from the beginning of 2018.
Holland was ‘‘pleased and relieved’’ to hear changes had been implemented at the university.
‘‘It’s a bonus that the first-year students aren’t just left to their own devices. I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else. That’s what I’ve said all along, no other parent should go through what I went through.’’
He was disappointed not to have heard from CLV since Pendrous’ death about any changes they have made. He had no plans to mark the anniversary today.
It felt like a month-long hurt. ‘‘For the rest of my life, the month of September will be grey.’’
CLV was approached for comment.