RIGHT SPEAK: If You have a Child in College .. living Off Campus .. you may want to read this

Although this 3 PART series is based on Boston students, it is applicable to any student in America who is living off campus and points out the dangers of living in surroundings that are not safe by any standard.

A house jammed with students, a life of promise lost:

It had been a long night.

As Binland Lee trudged up the rear staircase of 87 Linden St. early Sunday morning, the Boston University senior found a small gathering of housemates and friends sprawled across the living room sipping gin and tonics and mojitos and listening to music on a laptop.

The 22-year-old was exhausted after walking from a party near MIT where a friend had just confessed romantic feelings for her.

A little tipsy, Binland broke into a wide grin when she spotted Devi Gopal, an old classmate from Brooklyn Technical High School, sitting in her Allston apartment. They hung out for five minutes before Binland called it a night. Her freshly cut, glossy black hair swung across her back as she walked up stairs still adorned in twinkling Christmas lights.

Binland headed to her attic sanctuary, her perfect undergraduate space. The marine science major had hung a beach ball-colored hammock inspired by a school trip to Belize next to a giant poster of Hawaiian palm trees and ocean waves. Above the dormer window, Binland plastered a large blue and white flag of Finland — an amusing emblem of her trademark introduction.

“Hi, I’m Binland. Like Finland with a B,” she explained to new acquaintances.

She opened the tan curtain draped over her bed like a canopy and sank into the queen size mattress. Several hours later, Binland woke; fire was spreading through the house, climbing rapidly toward the attic.

“Get down!” her housemate Thiérry Désiré yelled from inside his bedroom across the hall.

The apartment had only one exit on the floor below — her perfect space was therefore also perfectly illegal — and dark smoke was now choking the hallway outside her bedroom door. It was a 26-foot plunge from her dormer window to the front lawn.