From a conversation between two writers on the staff of the Cornell University newspaper:
… Faculty and staff ought to engage students, one on one, in a discussion that reaches far beyond careers and academics. Part of this involves the faculty realizing just how important a role they play beyond the laboratory and the lecture hall. They are mentors for all of us, and their efforts are part of a bottom-up approach to making Cornell not just a place of instruction, but a home.
… I attended a dinner late last week with the Board of Trustees where Susan Murphy gave the closing remarks. Tears came easily to her and the rest of the room — full of millionaire movers and shakers — in part for the loss of Matt, William and Bradley, but perhaps in greater part for the feeling of helplessness adults and outsiders must feel in their attempts to prevent future tragedies and ease our suffering. We, the students, know what’s up with our classmates (or at least more so), and everyone else is almost completely in the dark….
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I don’t say the following is beautifully written, but of all the stuff I’ve been reading in the last few days about suicide – in the wake of the Cornell story – it states most concisely the core facts of the phenomenon.
The clear persistence of suicide throughout history suggests that it is a part of the human experience. Until we live in a radically different time and consciousness, one where people are never driven by internal or external demons to look for a way out of intractable suffering, we are not likely to be effective at eliminating suicide altogether. However, because the act so powerfully prompts those of us left behind to reflect on the sacredness of life and the role we individually and collectively play in easing the suffering that results in suicide, it leaves in its wake a deep inspiration to act; to care; to create webs of support that might catch those among us whose suffering becomes intolerable. In this way, acts of suicide invigorate and inspire innovation and remind us all of what really matters in life.
March 21st, 2010 at 5:38PM
Suicide is not one thing but many. It is the widow in India performing Suttee (no longer, thank God); it is the Jihadi detonating a belt of explosives; it is the Jew and the Gypsy and the homosexual avoiding the concentration camp during the Holocaust; it is Hermann Goering biting on a cyanide capsule in Nuremberg prison; it is the ailing conductor Sir Edward Downes joining his wife last year in death at a clinic in Switzerland; it is Scott walking away from his camp to certain death in an Antarctic blizzard in order to improve the chances of survival for his companions; it is the person leaping to the pavement below the World Trade Center on 9/11. Suicide occurs at a 16-fold increased rate in persons recently diagnosed with cancer and, early in the epidemic at least, the rate was similarly elevated in persons with a new diagnosis of AIDS. Suicide has many goals and motivations, sometimes altruistic, sometimes preemptive, sometimes cowardly, sometimes noble.
The suicides at Cornell presumably were clinical suicides, committed under the force of delusions or psychic pain or cognitive distortions that accompany psychiatric illnesses. Professional efforts to prevent these have had limited success. Practical measures like getting rid of carbon monoxide in the gas lines, putting catalytic converters into automobiles, and limiting access to firearms are more clearly effective than programs like suicide hotlines. For students, ready access without stigma to diagnostic and treatment services is key to forestalling at least some of these tragedies.
March 21st, 2010 at 6:17PM
Bernard: All true.
From what I’ve read, college student suicides tend overwhelmingly to be impulsive in nature, which suggests, in this particular case, the wisdom of at least temporarily posting guards at the overlooks.
The problem with impulsivity, of course, is that students are less likely to seek help, and communities less likely to see behavioral clues.
March 21st, 2010 at 7:01PM
Yes, that is a simple, practical measure that could yield results. It also can be intuitively satisfying for members of a college community who wish to do something.