Another season of worry?

It feels awful to say so, but I hope that Kevin MacDonald was just too drunk.

Too drunk to realize what was happening when he tumbled out of his third-floor fraternity bedroom window last month and died.

More than that, I hope that the University of Washington is so shaken by MacDonald's death that it spends the summer focused on safety in houses of Greek repute.

If what happened to MacDonald doesn't move UW officials to act — he was 21, a junior, by all accounts a decent guy and, above all, someone's adored son — I don't know what it will take.

Since the mid-1980s, at least six male students between 18 and 21 have died after falling from fraternity houses or dorms. At least five others have broken their backs, necks or suffered other severe injuries.

The UW's own interim chief of police, Ray Wittmier, called it "Too many."

But all that Eric Godfrey, UW vice provost for student life, could promise was a safety meeting with UW's police, environmental-safety experts and fraternities.

"It's a conversation we would like to get started," Godfrey told reporter Nick Perry.

A conversation? To "get started"? Not the angst-ridden concern and "as God is my witness" reaction I was hoping for.

Fact is, Godfrey said, the UW's hands are tied when it comes to the privately run Greek houses.

But the UW has a bigger bat than any fraternity paddle when it comes to dealing with the Greeks: The freshman list.

Each year, the UW distributes the list of incoming freshman to the fraternities to help them with their pledge drives.

Why not hold onto the list until all parties are satisfied that they aren't sending their freshest faces into dangerous places, where bunk-bed ladders are "secured" with sneakers (as in MacDonald's room), and windows let in not just wind, but worry?

"The idea of withholding lists ... suggests that we would have some sort of role in making decisions about safety in private homes," Godfrey told me. "I think that takes us into really complicated territory with respect to risk management and liability.

"I am not rejecting your idea out of hand," he added. "But this area is going to need a comprehensive, careful conversation."

Oh, brother. Back to the talking. But I get it.

In 1996, when I worked in North Carolina, five UNC students died in a frat-house fire.

It was followed by the same sort of institutional hand-wringing, until the city of Chapel Hill forced the Greeks' hand by requiring sprinkler systems.

Let's not forget that students have a role in their own well-being. Hard to say, but it's true.

A new Associated Press analysis of safety records found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available).

Maybe college students aren't learning how to avoid danger, but don't the Greeks know by now? The UW?

Another crop of students will be coming in the fall. Let's know it as only a season, and not a time of tragedy.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She sends prayers to the family.