Students are grieving and officials at Chapman University’s film school are re-examining already strict safety rules after a student died in a dune buggy rollover crash on April 15 while assisting USC students on a movie shoot.

Peng “Aaron” Wang, 29, from China, was the cinematographer for a production in the Imperial County desert community of Glamis. The dune buggy was navigating sand dunes when it crashed, the California Highway Patrol said. The three USC students on the vehicle were wearing restraints but Wang was not, the CHP said.

“It was one of the most awful days in my experience here,” said Stephen Galloway, who has been dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts since March 2020. “Our students were in tears.”

Chapman officials are assisting Wang’s parents with coming to the United States. The university plans to hold a memorial service when they arrive, Galloway said Tuesday, April 19.

He said students and faculty were fond of Wang, who was a third-year graduate student who was scheduled to graduate this spring with a master’s degree in fine arts.

Wang had volunteered to work on what Galloway said was the project of USC students. There is a tight bond among Chinese students at Southern California film schools, and several Chinese students were among those listed on a roster of students working on the film, Galloway said. Students from Loyola Marymount University and the New York Film Academy were also participating, Galloway said.

He said that since the tragedy, there has been discussion about whether to allow Chapman students to help film movies for other universities’ students. Practically speaking, Galloway said, that might be difficult to enforce, especially on projects that are being done outside of course work.

It was unclear whether the USC students were filming a movie for school credit or were doing so on their own, and what safety measures were in place. A message was left at the USC School of Cinematic Arts on Tuesday seeking that information.

Galloway said students are “hyper, hyper, hyper supervised” at Chapman.

“We have extreme protocols for safety. We would not allow a shoot without every aspect of safety being covered,” he said.

Chapman’s film school employs a full-time safety officer who reviews permits, staffing, shooting plans, insurance and other details but is not always present at the filming, Galloway said.

Galloway said he didn’t know the precise details of Wang’s accident but said the safety officer would not allow someone to film from a moving vehicle without being restrained by a harness.

“Never,” he added.

Following actor Alec Baldwin’s accidental fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the movie “Rust” in October, in which he used a gun Baldwin said he believed was not loaded, Galloway convened a safety meeting. Any operable guns, and any weapons that could be mistaken for guns, were banned from Chapman productions, he said.

Recently, Galloway added, a student was reprimanded for exceeding the daily 12-hour time limit for shooting a movie.