A night of drinking ends in death at Miami U.

Erica Buschick, an 18-year-old freshman at Miami University, started her Thursday night drinking two bottles of champagne with her roommate in Morris Hall. It was near the end of winter term, a time when campus dormitories are mostly empty.

They joined some friends to pregame at an apartment near campus, where they took shots from a Dasani water bottle filled with vodka she got from her parents. When that bottle was empty, they drank more from "a huge bottle of Grey Goose" that was filled with cheap vodka, Miami University Police Department records state.

The two women left the party to go to Brick Street Bar, but Buschick was too intoxicated to get in. Throughout the evening, Buschick was stumbling and even falling. The taxi driver, Jason Colwell, who took the two women back to Morris Hall said she fell to the ground face first when she got out of the cab.

Police found what appeared to be blood at the entrance to the dorm, in the stairwell and on the carpet outside their room.

Colwell helped walk Buschick up to her room on the second floor and set her down on a bean bag chair to make sure she wouldn't fall again.

Buschick fell asleep on her side, but never woke up.

"I feel like it's my fault," Colwell said, crying in an interview with police. "I was trying to help."

The next morning, Buschick's roommate, first-year student Reilley Graves, found her cold to the touch. That's when she called the police.

Graves also called her parents screaming and crying, according to police. She kept saying "Dad, she's dead."

The new details on the death of the freshman student from Gurnee, Illinois, help spotlight the deep sense of sadness at Miami this winter, not only among students but campus leadership.

"When you read the paper around the country, you’ll see stories like this again and again," Jayne Brownell, Miami's vice president for student affairs, said at a February Board of Trustees meeting. "This time it was one of our own."

Buschick died from alcohol poisoning on Jan. 20 and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.347 percent. That's more than four times the legal driving limit in Ohio.

The Butler County coroner's report said Buschick was found on the floor face down on a soft pillow, which could have contributed to her death. She also tested positive for anti-depressants.

Busckick had a "history of binge drinking," and her death was ruled an accident, according to autopsy and toxicology reports the coroner's office released Wednesday.

The university is working to help students realize that any one of them could be in that situation, Brownell said. Administrators are also determined to make sure it never happens again.

Last week, Miami President Gregory Crawford told the Enquirer he was “devastated" by what happened to Buschick as a parent and university president. Two days later, in a statement, Crawford said binge drinking is "a significant national public health issue” that it is "costing young lives.”

The university is wrestling with what administrators are calling a "blackout culture" among students centered on extensive consumption of hard liquor.

Extreme binge drinking is on the rise nationwide, and it's a major concern on college campuses, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. About 12.5 percent of college students are having 10 to 15 drinks in an evening with the intent to black out, Koob said.

“Part of the problem is young people not understanding they are dealing with a toxic substance,” Koob said. “Alcohol can kill you.”

More than 1,800 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related injuries each year, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Mike Curme, Miami's dean of students, said he's learned that when some students black out while drinking, it's not accidental.

“Many students in our community view it as a Purple Heart, something that is celebrated,” Curme said at the board meeting. “They go into a drinking session explicitly with the desire to black out.”

Miami's student affairs office is working to stigmatize blacking out while drinking so students don’t see it as a badge of honor.

Crawford, who started his role as Miami president in July, said he's assessing programs at Miami and other universities to figure out how to change the culture.

“We have an opportunity to make a big difference and become a model,” Crawford told the Enquirer. “We’ve got work to do.”