A suicide cluster (seven of the deaths were suicides) emerges at North Carolina State, and the dreadful thing is that each suicide risks nudging another student on the edge over the edge. Suicide is contagious.
This is presumably (aside from privacy/family considerations) why the school fails to describe methods – you don’t want to give on-the-precipice students ideas.
“In any community there is always a certain number of people who are on the edge, and something as emotionally charged as a suicide (or multiple suicides) in the community (especially a small community) is frequently enough to tip more of them over.“
What we do know about the school’s suicides is suggestive. Anyone who followed the male/Asian clusters at other engineering schools not that long ago will wonder about the ethnicity of some of the students at NC State/engineering who may have killed themselves.
How many were gun suicides? UD wouldn’t be surprised if it were one hundred percent. It’s North Carolina, where guns are everywhere. Guns would help account for the school’s high number: With a gun you almost never, as it were, miss. Every other method gives you a bit of a fighting chance.
As for the draining, shell-shocked sensation NC students who are watching all of this report feeling: Well yeah. Jesus.