… 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.
Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=34968
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
February 26th, 2012 at 12:27AM
UD, are you familiar w/ the name Brett Sokolow?
Since you blog at insidehighered.com, I assume that the answer is yes.
We know Cal pays for Brett’s advice. When a 24 year old student recently (2010?) turned up dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his room at the frat house near the Cal campus, the administration insisted – after full investigation – that it was a tragic accident, not a suicide. (The student’s family wasn’t buying that line.)
Mr. Sokolow’s recent (last fall) advice runs contrary to the US ED OCR ‘Dear Colleague’ letter re: students assessed as suicidal but otherwise not homicidal. The shrinks (and thus OCR) have concluded that suicidal students are better off remaining on campus, b/c kicking them out really wrecks their lives. (Sad that 20+ years of research are needed to validate common sense conclusions, but that’s what you get from clin. psych.)
Sokolow’s response to the Dear Colleague letter (given publicly as free advice to universities generally) was along the lines of ‘violate the law, kick the suicidal students off campus’.
It is hard to interpret that view as 1) being in the best interests of students or 2) minimizing universities’ liability. Rather, this appears to be very much about PR. Sokolow gives advice which, when followed, seeks to minimize the chances that students will end their lives on/near campus.
So the event at MIT currently in the news cycle has to be evaluated with all this other stuff lurking in the background. If MIT gets advice from Mr. Sokolow, or has simply bought into the world view he’s promoting, then what ever MIT says has to be evaluated with the ‘cynical-bullcrap-n-lies-detector’ turned on and scanning on all frequencies. Drug OD will be called accident by MIT/Police even if it wasn’t. I would not put it past the institution to bury or even destroy evidence of suicide given the prevailing winds on campuses generally.
When exactly did the nation’s institutions of higher learning become places where truth is drowned in the bathtub, or worse, daily?