… the University of Rhode Island – routinely admit people who riot at the drop of a hat. These schools are big sloppy drunks.

First out of the gate this academic year is the storied URI:

[S]everal students were injured while fighting with broken beer bottles by smashing [them] over one another’s head. Students milled about throughout Fraternity Circle, with bystanders coming to watch the fights break out.

The URI officer stationed at the event called for backup and all on-duty URI officers responded — a lieutenant, sergeant and six officers parked in the streets, but students refused to disperse.

URI officers began using pepper spray on the crowd to get students to disperse, and several students were attended to by EMS for related injuries.

Two liberal arts types at NYU live blog a Stern (NYU’s business school) class.

Results? Amusing.

… Elaine Ellis Thomas, a Yale Divinity student, writes beautifully about the suicide of her son two years ago.

Suicide brings on a very particular and peculiar kind of grief. The guilt and second-guessing and pure horror that someone could end one’s own life cause excruciating pain for family and friends. I have learned more about this than I care to know in the time since Seth died. Although we still know very little about John Miller’s tragic passing, I thought it might be helpful to share some of that hard-earned knowledge.

You could not have prevented it. Even if you think that you could have on that particular occasion, there is no guarantee that it would not have happened some other time. If you are wondering why you didn’t go with John or ask him to come over if he seemed out of sorts, don’t blame yourself. Seth’s roommate was in an adjoining room when he died. Having someone nearby made no difference at all.

If you’re trying to make rational sense of how something like this could happen to someone with such talent and such a bright future, you really can’t think about it rationally — there is no rational explanation. Normal people, those who are not sick in some way, do not kill themselves. Our most basic human instinct is for survival, so to cause one’s own demise subverts that in ways our healthy intellects can’t imagine.

If you’re thinking that John made a choice to end his life, I can’t agree. Whatever was tormenting him — depression, mental illness, some event that threw his mental wiring off kilter — that is what took him. As I said before, it isn’t a rational choice. Suicides are committed by people driven by a distorted mental and emotional reality. It isn’t really a choice.

Thursday’s suicide – John Miller, a dedicated musician and teacher – had all the marks of impulsivity and enigma that Thomas talks about. He jumped from an open window in a music department building.

An acquaintance describes Miller as a “‘workaholic’ who would log 18-hour days, only to arrive at the office again the next day at 6 a.m.”

A note from the Yale Daily News reviews the vexed business of covering these stories – in particular, the business of trying to avoid copycat suicides.

A York student hears a professor say something anti-semitic, rushes out of the room in a rage, and informs on him all over the Jewish community. The professor is branded an anti-semite.

The professor, who is Jewish, was clearly using the anti-semitic statement in his lecture about prejudice as an example of a reprehensible opinion. The student failed to understand this.

Interviewed later, the student apologized profusely and …

No:

[Senior Sarah] Grunfeld said Tuesday she may have misunderstood the context and intent of Johnston’s remarks, but that fact is insignificant.

“The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized’ still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that’s pretty serious.”

Grunfeld also expressed skepticism that Johnston was in fact Jewish.

Asked directly by a reporter whether she believes Johnston is lying, she was unclear.

“Whether he is or is not, no one will know,” she said. “. . . Maybe he thought because he is Jewish he can talk smack about other Jews.”

York is about to graduate this woman.

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Mr UD’s reaction: “The same words came out of her mouth. Context be damned. Let the word go out.”

Adam, a 22-year-old junior with a double major in psychology and sociology at George Washington University, said he’s not sorry he left school in March to join the [Libyan anti-Gaddafi fighters]. He told his Libyan parents, who also live in Washington, about his plans only after he’d bought the plane ticket.

“You value things more and get a better perspective on life,” said Adam, sporting thick black-rimmed glasses, military fatigues and a bandana in camouflage colors. If he survives the war, he plans to go back to school to finish his degree and then settle in a free Libya.

… is arrested for a chain of pharmacy thefts. Twenty years old. A freshman.

It’s an American catastrophe that has been dubbed pharmageddon, though it rarely pierces the public consciousness. Occasionally a celebrity overdose will attract attention – Anna Nicole Smith, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson – but they are specks in a growing mountain of human mortality.

This list reminds me that I have meant to list some university students – or recent university graduates – who have in the last few months died of pain-killer overdoses.

Austin Box, University of Oklahoma.

Robert Mueller, Wake Forest.

Wilson Forrester, University of Arizona.

Hope Reichbach, New York University.

Michael Israel, University of Buffalo.

The mother of a Purdue University student who died of heatstroke in the forests of Grand Cayman Island last week recalls his passion for reptiles. “We’ll find comfort in that, as upset as we are.”

Rescue crews had enormous difficulty reaching him.

The rescue attempt included fire and ambulance workers trekking through about two miles of bush land while carrying stretchers and other equipment to reach the man, who was believed to be suffering from hyperthermia (heat stroke). The bush was so thick that emergency vehicles could not be driven into the area.

Medical personnel stabilised the man while the Royal Cayman Islands Police helicopter was called out to attempt to pick him up.

One problem: Nowhere to land.

So firefighters used machetes and a chainsaw to clear trees and bush to create an area large enough for the chopper to touch down. The man was then carried to the helicopter to be transported to hospital.

… seems to have been alcohol-related. An investigation is ongoing.

Huffington Post, via the Miami Herald.

Gabriel Mendigutia, a student at Florida International University dared his girlfriend, Ally Castro, to shoot him in the chest with a pellet gun last week. She did, almost killing him.

Mendigutia had been been drinking beer …

From the trial of a woman just convicted of health care fraud.

[Isachi] Gil signed dozens of documents claiming that she was providing …diabetic services when, in fact, she was attending classes at Florida International University, evidence showed.

Everyone knows about the prescription drug abuse pandemic going on in the country right now, and of course universities, full of immature people experimenting with pills and alcohol, have plenty of problems along these lines.

One high-profile overdose death – a nineteen year old at the University of Arizona, the well-connected son of the Tennessee Democratic Party chair – points to the difficulties schools face in responding to the situation. Although Wilson Forrester was such a notorious user that he’d earned the nickname Blackout Willie, no one seems to have done anything about it.

The UA Police report outlines a sad tale of people who knew the student was deep into drugs and alcohol but did little more than warn him to change.

As I say in this post’s title, the University of Arizona and the local police should in response try to bust a bit of the campus drug trade. Wouldn’t hurt if UA’s president issued some sort of statement as well.

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Update: Probably another one.

… [C]ollege students with laptops spend most of their time in class reading gossip blogs and trolling Facebook….

… from the gates of the White House.

… and its expensive, successful effort to get their kid (now President Trump’s son-in-law) into Harvard. (The New York magazine article from which I got the quotation below is mainly about the jail time Papa Kushner has racked up. Money and influence can get you into Harvard, but apparently cannot always keep you out of jail.)

When Jared applied to college, Charlie was determined to get him into the most prestigious schools, and he called in favors to achieve his goal. In 1998, Charlie made a $2.5 million pledge to Harvard. According to The Price of Admission, the best-selling book written by Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden, Charlie asked New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg to lobby Ted Kennedy to put in a call to Harvard admissions dean William Fitzsimmons on Jared’s behalf.

Alex Pareene, in Salon, reviews this history in light of Trump’s attack on Obama’s Harvard admission.

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And baby, I gotta tell you. UD has been covering universities for a long time, and the big affirmative action story is Kushner’s kid at Harvard, Ralph Lauren’s kids at Duke, and scads of other money admits. The Laurens are what’s called a “development family.”