Durkheim’s observation plays out in a moving way in the university (or high school) setting, where students and former students may choose places on campus associated with their greatest successes or most significant experiences.
A sixty year old guy who’d been named “the University of Montana’s outstanding athlete in 1975″ killed himself on that campus. Nora Miller, a Wesleyan track star, killed herself on the track.
A football player who’d been at the University of South Carolina went not there but “to his old high school and parked near the field where he had starred as a wide receiver in football and a sprinter in track and field.”