A month after a Kansas University freshman fell to his death from a ledge outside his seventh-story residence hall room, KU housing officials are taking steps they hope will prevent similar incidents in the future.

Ken Stoner, director of student housing, said Friday that beginning next month, warning stickers would be placed on all dormitory windows near the latch. The sticker also will point out that students will pay $125 if the screen is removed.

A second sticker will be placed on the screen and window frame. The sticker will be broken if the screen is removed, proving someone had tampered with the screen.

In all, the stickers will be applied to about 6,000 windows in eight residence halls. Six of the halls have ledges.

“I hope I don’t collect a dime,” Stoner said. “This is to encourage people to leave the screens on. Hopefully between the warning and the knowledge that if you take the screen off, there will be a significant fine, it will work.”

Freshman Eric Wellhausen, 18, of Mount Prospect, Ill., was killed Sept. 12 when he fell from the ledge outside Oliver Hall. KU police said Wellhausen had fallen after either leaning out of his window or being on the ledge while smoking.

Wellhausen was the fifth student to fall from a KU residence hall in the past decade.

The ledges, a standard architectural feature for dormitories built in the 1960s, were designed as sun screens for the windows below them.

“It’s not easy to get out of them. You have to stand on a chair and then squeeze through,” Stoner said.

Stoner said he talked to his counterparts at other Big 12 universities and got a mixed response about whether the warning stickers would work.

These stickers will go on windows and screens in Kansas University's eight residence halls as a safety measure.

“We are going to go ahead and give it a try,” he said. “We are hopeful that trying to impress upon the student the hazard of it with a constant visual warning, it will work.”

Similar sticker programs are under way at Iowa State and Kansas State universities. Oklahoma State University puts devices in windows to keep them from being opened more than a foot.

Stoner said it would take several weeks before the stickers would be applied on all of the residence hall windows.

This warning will break if a screen is removed, resulting in a 25 fine.

“The rooms are safe. The windows are safe. The facilities are safe when used as designed,” Stoner said. “All of these recent incidents have involved alcohol or drugs or a combination.”

About 3,600 students live in KU residence halls.