UCLA Can’t Seem to do Right by Burn Victim or Her Family

During my time at Pomona College, I was privileged to know two beautiful, brilliant sisters. The eldest, Naveen, was in my class, while her younger sister Sheri studied abroad and graduated with Andy’s little sister Susan. Both women were kind, funny and scarily intelligent - a credit to their family, the college, and to one another. Their potential was limitless - both women had the character and talents to be of great benefit to the human race.

Now, only one of them will get that chance. Sheri Sangji died earlier this year after a horrific and entirely preventable laboratory accident at UCLA.

On December 29, 2008 - while the campus was nearly deserted for the winter holiday - Sheri was working unsupervised to transfer a highly dangerous chemical from one container to another. The chemical in question - t-butyl lithium - bursts into flame when exposed to air. That’s what happened when the stopper came out of the container in Sheri’s hands. She was burned over 43% of her body and died 18 agonizing days later. She was 23.

At the time of the incident, several previously cited safety violations in the lab where Sheri worked remained uncorrected. Sheri was not adequately trained in safety measures for handling the chemical, nor was she trained in what to do if she caught fire. She was not wearing a protective lab coat. The University has since been fined $31,875 for four violations - one regulatory and three “serious” - that lead directly to Sheri’s death

It is a laughably small sum when compared with the devastating result of those violations.

Since the accident, the University has been unforthcoming, insulting and possibly even dishonest with the Sangji family and the regulatory authorities responsible for the ongoing investigation. According to the LA Times:

On the night of the fire, a deputy fire marshal had ordered [principal investigator Patrick] Harran and his researchers to stay out of the lab, which was then locked and secured with plastic crime-scene tape, records show. But the next morning, the deputy reported, he found that some 5-gallon drums of improperly stored flammable liquids were gone, and other items had been moved around.

There also was no sign of a container of highly flammable hexane that Sheri Sangji said had spilled and fueled the flash fire that engulfed her, according to a report by Los Angeles fire officials who interviewed her shortly afterward.

When UCLA fire officials interviewed Harran on Feb. 5, he said he knew nothing about the hexane. He acknowledged asking two researchers to clean up the lab and remove the drums, but said he had no ulterior motive.

“I just wanted to get all those drums out,” he said. “It was my fault. . . . And it didn’t relate to the accident, but it just looked bad.”

Then, the University had the gall to appeal the censure they received, a legal move aimed to limit their civil liability. Finally, when a public relations fiasco ensued, they backed off the appeal and issued an appalling statement:

“In our view it was not worth the distraction it was causing,” [said Kevin Reed, UCLA vice chancellor for legal affairs.] “It was in UCLA’s best interest to withdraw the appeal and move forward, as we have been trying to do since this tragic day happened.”

Reed also accused the family of sending [the regulatory body] a letter “ghost-written by plaintiffs lawyers” in an “effort to get some big judgment at the end of the rainbow here.”

Naveen, a medical student at Harvard, says that she wrote the letter, and I take her at her word. If anyone can craft a well-written and justifiably outraged appeal for justice, she can. Clearly, Mr. Reed does not have any clue who he is dealing with - as he would if he had the good sense to get to know Naveen or her family.

The bottom line is this: we don’t know the full extent of what happened to Sheri yet. We may never know everything - but UCLA at least owes the Sangji family a respectful and dignified attempt at transparency. Instead, they seek only to cover their own asses, creating still more suffering and strife for a family that has known more than enough.