Alex Sohn wears his son's UBC jacket which he says fits a bit small, in Burnaby, B.C., on June 17. Mr. Sohn's 19-year-old son Kyle, died in a dormitory at UBC two years ago.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Kyle Sohn’s roommates at the University of British Columbia residence awoke one morning to loud groaning sounds coming from behind his locked bedroom door. An alarm clock droned on. They called his cellphone over and over and pounded on the door to no avail.
Mr. Sohn was prone to nightmares – known to sometimes make loud noises and thrash in his sleep. But his roommates could hear him vomiting, and their concern was mounting. Unsure of what was happening or who to call, they phoned the front desk and played a recording of the disturbing sounds in the hope somebody could perform a wellness check.
But the person staffing the front desk wasn’t sure what to do either and directed them to call the building’s manager, also known as a residence life manager. The RLM, citing UBC policy, said he wasn’t allowed to open Mr. Sohn’s door to check on him. He told the roommates to call 911 if they thought it was an emergency.
“He went quiet. And that’s when we were, like, ‘Oh, maybe we’re being overdramatic,’” said one of Mr. Sohn’s roommates, Prince Fox. But when he put his ear to the door, it didn’t sound right. “I could kind of hear him rattling,” Mr. Fox recalled. “And that’s when we decided that we would call 911.”
By the time first responders finally got into Mr. Sohn’s room, the 19-year-old was on the floor beneath his bed – with no pulse. Paramedics administered naloxone and used CPR to get his heart started again, but he was declared brain dead upon arriving at the hospital. Mr. Sohn’s father says police told him it was an overdose, and an analysis of his blood found the presence of opiates, but the BC Coroners Service can’t confirm his cause of death because it’s still under investigation.
“We’re students and friends of his,” Mr. Fox said. “At the end of the day, we are not trained to deal with this.”
Since Mr. Sohn died in November, 2022, UBC has changed the way staff respond to such emergencies, but his parents say key gaps remain. The overdose death earlier this year of another student, at the University of Victoria, raised similar questions about the responsibilities and training of residence staff – and students themselves – when responding to students in a medical crisis.
Like the parents of UVic student Sidney McIntyre-Starko, Mr. Sohn’s parents have filed freedom-of-information requests and have gathered documents to piece together what happened to their son. Their findings show conflicting policies on when residence staff can enter a student’s room, intervention the Sohns believe could have saved their son. Now they’re calling on the school to implement more comprehensive safety measures for students, including the creation of a dedicated on-campus emergency response team, one that has been under consideration for at least seven years.
University residences allow students to immerse themselves in campus life and live independently while still benefiting from in-house support. A typical residence has a front desk that functions like a concierge at a hotel, as well as staff who, among other things, organize events, connect students with resources and provide support and advice. They include front desk staff (regular employees, sometimes students), residence advisers (paid upper-year students) and residence life managers (full-time professionals).
Alex Sohn, Kyle’s father, said he was comfortable sending his son to live in residence because he expected there would be an extra layer of safety for a teen who was still new to living away from home.
“When he went to a dormitory, I would never, never have thought about, worried about, his safety,” he said.
“Parents put their students into a dormitory so they can take care of my kid like a parent.”
The residence contract each student signs says “authorized personnel of the university” can enter an accommodation without prior notice “to ensure the health and safety of any member of the community.”
But the written policy for residence staff provided to The Globe and Mail explicitly states the opposite: “Residence staff are NOT to enter a resident’s room.” The emphasis is in the document.
UBC’s director of university affairs, Matthew Ramsey, said privacy rules prevent him from discussing Mr. Sohn’s case directly.
But in general, he said, entering a room is possible if a staff member has established a credible reason for doing so. Front desk staff must assess the information they are provided by the caller.
“Residence units are private spaces, much like rental suites off campus, so it is inappropriate for UBC staff (the de facto landlords) to enter without permission unless the situation is a time-sensitive emergency,” he said in an e-mail.
He added that Mr. Sohn’s death had a deep impact on all the UBC staff involved. He said that while staff are trained to assess urgent situations, they are reliant on the information provided by the person calling the front desk.
That does little to comfort Kyle’s father.
“How the hell does UBC protocol come before the emergency situation?” he said.
UBC has since made adjustments to front desk policies, Mr. Ramsey said. Staff are now equipped with additional questions to assess a situation and are mandated to initiate a 911 call themselves to share students’ contact information with dispatchers in the event of an emergency.
But the updated policies still advise against entering a student’s room; even if entry is well-intended, it could be a violation of privacy, they state. They are also intended to protect staff “from exposure to possible traumatic situations” and “to avoid contaminating a possible crime scene.”
Another measure that Mr. Sohn’s family believes could have made a difference would have been the presence of a dedicated on-campus emergency response team. Such teams, which are in place at other Canadian schools, including UBC’s Okanagan campus, comprise students with a passion for health care. They are trained in advanced first aid and receive mentorship, guidance and medical direction from a practising physician. The same year Mr. Sohn died, members of the UBC Okanagan team saved a man’s life after he suffered a major heart attack.
But at UBC’s sprawling Vancouver campus, security guards double as the primary first responders. They’re given Occupational First Aid Level 2 training, with additional instruction on cultural sensitivity and how to respond when somebody is experiencing mental health issues. However, without medical oversight, they aren’t allowed to administer basic life-saving medications such as asthma inhalers or EpiPens.
Student groups at that campus have been trying to get an emergency response team approved since 2017. They got close in the 2018-19 academic year, securing medical oversight and approval for funding. But according to internal UBC communications reviewed by The Globe, the administration and lawyers held a closed-door meeting on Feb. 20, 2019, and then, in an e-mail sent to the team organizers, a school official explained that the university would discontinue its support for the program.
Seven years since initial consultations began, Mr. Ramsey said UBC supports the idea of a student-led team. Two medical students have been co-ordinating with the Okanagan team in hopes of expediting the process.
The responses by 911 dispatchers to both Mr. Sohn’s death and that of Ms. McIntyre-Starko have also prompted scrutiny.
Ms. McIntyre-Starko’s family accessed 911 records that revealed multiple failures in the response of a 911 operator, who waited seven minutes to dispatch emergency services, and university security guards, who failed to tell the dispatchers that Ms. McIntyre-Starko and a friend were blue and suffering from a lack of oxygen.
In Mr. Sohn’s case, records show he placed two 911 calls from his smartwatch on the morning of the incident – one at 7:33 and another at 8:05. Dispatchers at E-Comm, the organization contracted by B.C. to dispatch 911 calls, said they could not discern anything audible on the calls and attempted to phone Mr. Sohn back multiple times without success. When their calls went unanswered, dispatchers treated each of Mr. Sohn’s calls like pocket dials and did not send anybody to check on him.
This is standard policy, as emergency services cannot check on the hundreds of calls placed accidentally each day, said former E-Comm media relations specialist Kelly Furey.
By March 1, 2025, E-Comm plans to have new technology in place that will allow people in situations where they can’t communicate verbally to contact the service via text message. It will also improve the system’s ability to locate callers.
Mr. Sohn’s parents say they have spent the months since his death battling opaque bureaucracies, wading through legal communications and paying lawyer’s fees while trying to deal with the anger and trauma of losing their son.
Kyle was kind-hearted, personable and exceptionally bright – he was a Presidential Scholar. He was generous with his time, his smile and his energy, his father said.
“Everybody’s asking me to sue them, take them to court,” Mr. Sohn said. “It’s not about money. … They have to change the rules.”