Yes, Scathing Online Schoolmarm notes that this sentence is triply redundant (unpredictable, predict, in advance), but it comes from a reasonably thoughtful consideration of suicide. I like the way the guy – a psychiatry professor – says he does understand suicide, even though the meme, the thing, the trope, the conceit, is that suicide’s all enigmatic.

Because it is at its essence a perceptual disorder, [depression] causes one to see the entire world as pain. It feels painful inside, but it also feels painful outside.

When a person is depressed, the entire world is disturbed and distressed, so there is nowhere to escape. And it is this fact that makes suicide so seductive, because it seems to offer the one available escape option.

(Go here for an elaboration on this from David Foster Wallace.)

This writer goes on to say that “the means for committing suicide should be removed from the environment.” He’s talking about the home. We can’t do much about a world brimming with suicide locations.

And yet even as we speak Cornell and NYU, who’ve had suicide clusters, are both futzing with their environment in just this way. Cornell is netting its bridges, and NYU is digitally shielding its high-atrium library.

A commenter on an article about a student recently expelled from Portland State University nails it.

Of course people like this guy, who lied about having four guns in his apartment after campus police went there because of threatening remarks he made about one of his professors, will sue the universities that make them leave. Doesn’t matter. PSU did the right thing.

Tim Foley was among the children most extensively groomed for a future spy career, officials say. Though he wasn’t American-born, his parents lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, under the assumed names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Mr. Foley was 20 when his parents were arrested and had just finished his sophomore year at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

His parents revealed their double life to him well before their arrest, according to current and former officials, whose knowledge of the discussion was based on surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included bugging suspects’ homes. The officials said the parents also told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps.

He agreed, said the officials. At the end of the discussion with his parents, according to one person familiar with the surveillance, the young man stood up and saluted “Mother Russia.” He also agreed to travel to Russia to begin formal espionage training, officials said.

Did I teach this guy how to be even more American in an Intro American Novel seminar? Was I an unwitting tool in the hands of Russian intelligence?

As it prepares to cash in on student drinking, the University of Minnesota reminds us that its preferred focus remains academics.

Iowa’s different.

… was swept up in a drug raid. Innocent of any charges, he was nonetheless held in a DEA cell for five days with no food or water; for two days, he was in total darkness.

The UCSD engineering student said he missed several midterm exams last week. Attorney Eugene Iredale said he hoped university officials would allow his client time to make up the missed school work.

I think UCSD will find this an acceptable excuse.

It’s that time of year.

———————–

UD thanks Wendy.

The son of a disgraced Chinese leader Bo Xilai received three traffic tickets while driving a Porsche [costing around $80,000] in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Bo Guagua, son of the ousted Communist Party chief at the center of a widening corruption scandal, had earlier this week sought to downplay his allegedly lavish lifestyle as a student at Harvard University.

Harvard must be pissed. If they’re ever going to begin growing their endowment – currently an anemic 32 billion – it’s going to have to come from guys like Bo.

… in which two students were killed, there’s been another robbery of students. As the suspect fled, campus security officers wounded him, and he’s now in custody.

From a New York Times roundup of Tribeca Film Festival offerings:

Andrew Semans’s “Nancy, Please” conveys a similar turbulence lurking just under the civilized surface of everyday life. In the story, which traffics in the ghastly-funny misanthropy that is the specialty of Neil LaBute, a doctoral candidate and his angry former roommate engage in an escalating battle of wills when she refuses to return his copy of “Little Dorrit,” which contains the notes for his thesis. Observing this conflict, which begins to destroy his sanity, is like watching a slow-motion car accident. As much as you may loathe the characters, you can’t avert your eyes.

… to get UD‘s attention, and these three Saudis, two of them residents at the University of Ottawa’s med school, and the other lately tossed from said med school, are doing that. Background here.

And here’s an update:

A Saudi doctor who is suing the University of Ottawa for more than $55 million has lost his bid to overturn his dismissal from the Faculty of Medicine’s neurosurgery residency program.

In a decision earlier this month, a panel of Ontario Division Court judges rejected Dr. Waleed AlGaithy’s argument that the university’s Senate appeals committee violated procedural fairness and acted unreasonably when it upheld his dismissal from the residency program …

Plus, since they decided to sue for all those buckaroos, they can’t even do the Human Rights Tribunal thing!

In three decisions dated March 29, 2012, the Human Rights Tribunal dismissed the complaints from AlGaithy, Aba-Alkhail and Alsaigh, saying it was barred from proceeding because the three had commenced civil suits based on the same facts and allegations and were seeking similar remedies.

That violates provisions of Ontario’s Human Rights Code that prohibit the tribunal from hearing complaints that are the subject of civil proceedings, the decisions said.

… have been killed in what looks like an attempted carjacking near campus.

… has been found dead. His roommate “found him about 7:40 a.m. on the floor of their room in Roy Wilkins Hall.” It’s not yet known how he died.

… critical condition. They were driving to the airport, on their way to spring break, and were hit head-on by a person going the wrong way on the interstate.

… Scroll down to Colbert Report clip. Start at 2:41 and realize the emptiness behind your religious delusions.

… runs the headline, but the cause of death of MIT undergraduate Brian Anderson simply hasn’t yet been determined. No foul play, and no clear signs of suicide.

Here are two other possibilities:

Maybe Anderson had an underlying health problem – weak heart, epilepsy. He may have had a condition of which he himself was not aware.

The other possibility that has to be considered is alcohol/drugs.