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In This Issue

• The Issue of Suicide
• Potential Hobo Camp or Wussy Veldt?
• Choose Your Own Fed-venture
• Letters To and From The Editor
• Thumb-Addled Troglodytes
• Ed-in-Chief Joins Staff Diaspora
• Jesus is a Crappy Dermatologist
• Action Jacksons
• News Briefs
• On Action and the Philosophy of Inaction
• Wacky Fun Whitey Meets a Bum
• Fed Bash a Spanking Success
• Point / Counterpoint: Actions and Words
• Horoscopes Will Keep You Regular
• Revenge for Your Shitty Housing Lottery Number
• Columbia Needs Real Affirmative Action
• News Quiz
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.9

There has been a rash of deaths and suicides at Columbia in the past three years. Five undergraduate students have killed themselves since Spring 1998. Of those, three took their lives in 2000.

This has occasioned concern among the student body. Is there a trend? Does a high incidence of suicide at Columbia in some way suggest that there is something terribly wrong here?

"What you can say [of the Columbia suicides]," said Ralph Rickgarn, a student behavior coordinator for housing and residential life at the University at Minnesota, and the author of Perspectives on College Student Suicide, "is that for that particular population over that space in time, you do have an incredibly high incidence of suicide, well over the national average."

Mr. Rickgarn said the national average of suicides among people age 17-22 is about 13 per 100,000 people. Last year, Columbia's average was 3 per 7380 (total undergrad population), or about 41 per 100,000.

In answer to the question of whether Columbia may be an environment that encourages suicidal behavior, or one that might attract students prone to suicide, Dr. Herbert Hendin of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) said, "There is some suspicion but no good evidence. It may be true that a student's eccentricity is less a disqualifying factor for admittance [at Columbia] than at other schools, but no one has proven that at better colleges where there's more stress there are higher rates of suicide."

"You need to interpret [the number of Columbia suicides] with caution," said Dr. Richard Eichler, Director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS). "You're dealing with very small numbers, so it's hard to point to a trend."

Currently, there is a trend in the number of students seen at CPS. "Compared to ten years ago," continued Dr. Eichler, "we are seeing about twice as many students. It's not clear if that's because students are more stressed, our services are more accessible, or because we have expanded so much in that decade."

Suicide is on the rise nationally, Dr. Eichler said, and one would expect that to be reflected on college campuses. In the decade prior to the Fall semester 1998, according to what Columbia officials reported to the New York Times (10/8/98), Columbia has had only one suicide.

A Public Issue

Columbia has received national attention for its suicide rate, in an article in Time magazine (1/15/01), which compared the school to peer institutions Harvard and MIT, and in an article in the Boston Globe (2/5/01) which said the school either does not keep or would not divulge information about suicides on campus.

At his State of the University Address on March 20th, University President George Rupp was asked by a student wearing a noose what the Administration was doing about the suicides. President Rupp claimed that there was research and work being done on the matter, but that no one yet knew why there had been so many. He said that one could take the attitude of his Zen friends and conclude that: "Shit happens."

Some students say they have been bothered by the coldness of the administration's response to the suicides.

Matt Continetti, CC'03, wrote an opinion piece for The Columbia Spectator (2/6/01), in which he lambasted Dean of Student Affairs Chris Colombo for his "unfeeling bluntness" in his email to inform the community of the deaths in the past year and a half, and he called on the administration to recognize that "its own shortcomings may have promoted or exacerbated the ever climbing death toll," making pointed reference to the lack of support for students because of an inadequate advising system.

Dean Colombo said that while email is "admittedly impersonal," it is an efficient way to alert all students, staff and faculty of the tragedy. And when he writes the emails, he said, he is not always at liberty to be free with information about the suicide, because family members may not know about a student's death yet, or may not want details broadcast to the student body.

Associate Dean of Student Affairs Sandra Johnson described the administration's standard response to a suicide.

"It's a three-tiered response," she said. "We send out an e-mail to students, staff and faculty. Then we reach out to those groups of people that may be most affected. Then we get out information where students who need help one-to-one but may not have a direct connection to the student can get help."

Dean Johnson said that during such a crisis, it becomes "all hands on deck" and members of security, deans of the schools and of student affairs, residential life staff, student services staff, and members of the Chaplain's office all respond and are involved in handling the crisis.

On the Frontlines

Resident life staff members are part of the first line of response to the trauma in the community after a suicide, according to the administration.

A student who lived in the building where Kathleen Roskot lived when she was murdered in Spring 2000, and who wished to remain anonymous, said that she was impressed by the level of support provided by the administration, and said that there was initially a building-wide meeting of all residents to inform them of the murder and provide resources for coping. She added that there was great support for her and residents from CPS and the deans, that RAs were well informed and helpful, and that her class center notified all her teachers to let them know that she might need academic support.

"But there is a certain amount of self-awareness that you need to contact deans if you need help," she said, referring to the fact that some students, not in the groups primarily identified as needing support by the administration, had to advocate for themselves to get support academically and emotionally.

She did, though, feel that the sudden appearance of many of the deans in the dorm to support students and res life staff made her uneasy. "When I found out that Kathleen was murdered," she said, "that's when I first met Dean Colombo. To all of a sudden meet him underscored all the times I had never met him before. Then it felt like a real crisis."

RAs and res life staff are trained to be liaisons to other resources- such as CPS, deans and security- for the students at all times, said Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Brian Paquette.

They are not, however, counselors. "They are trained to identify situations where a student may need help," Dean Paquette said, "but they are not therapists on call."

It's a Litigious World

One reason for a lack of discussion on this campus could be that liability is a concern for the university.

Dr. Hendin said, "Suicide is today a common cause of lawsuits. This leads colleges to adopt a self-protective attitude with regard to talking about it, because they are worried they will be held responsible. This may prevent them from administering proper care."

Mr. Rickgarn said that there is not good data on the incidence of student suicides at college because schools rarely publish data.

"No school wants to be known as the school with a high incidence of suicide," he said. "They say they don't keep the data, or they don't share it, and nothing right now mandates that they release it."

Dr. Eichler said that the school is obviously aware of how many students have died, and are usually informed the cause of death by families, but that suicide attempts are hard to track, "What you qualify as an attempt is a complicated question. And many attempts don't even come to our attention, especially those that never require medical attention."

"We're in a litigious society," said Dean Johnson. "We might be concerned about our liability when releasing information, but it wouldn't stop us from taking a student in hand to see a counselor or a dean and interfering in their life that way."

Psychological Care on Campus

Despite the criticism CPS has received from students for the long wait for appointment times, Columbia has a counseling service that outdoes many others in the country. A proportionally large budget, unlimited visits over the course of a college career (although there is a yearly cap), a diverse and well-trained staff that undergoes constant training, and extensive use of referrals and psychopharmological resources are aspects of CPS that make it a step ahead of many colleges.

However, Columbia, like all colleges, is not set up to deal with seriously ill students. "No college is set up to have all the resources they can in their mental health system," said Dr. Hendin. "Nobody is doing this in an ideal way."

Dr. Eichler supported the idea that all counseling services at schools are designed to be short term. "We are equipped to respond to students' crises and problems, but it goes beyond our mandate and our capacity to follow them indefinitely."

One thing Dr. Hendin outlined might help a University provide more adequate care would be to make use of an internet questionnaire the AFSP is offering four institutions (Columbia, Brown, Penn, Emory) to administer in the fall, and for which the AFSP will provide staff and funding to analyze.

The questionnaire would be advertised to the incoming freshman, although made available to all students. Submitted anonymously over a secure website, the questionnaire would address at-risk factors for suicide. Students identified as at-risk would be notified, and an effort would be made to reach out to them, to get them to seek help, and to inform them about services they have available to them and referrals that could be made off campus.

"The hope is really that we can engage the students who are quietly depressed," said Dr. Hendin adding that that is the case with many college students, whose depression is only known when something happens or they injure themselves. "This may make it easier for them to seek or receive help."

A resistance on the part of Columbia's administration, he added, has been an issue. "The University is afraid of their liability," he pointed out. "If the questionnaire identifies a student as at-risk, and the student refuses to seek help and then injures him/herself, the University may be liable," although strict anonymity might help alleviate this issue.

Time reported that Brown and Syracuse have been sued on the basis that they did not enough to prevent suicides. The suit against Brown failed; the one against Syracuse is still pending.

Dr. Hendin said that Columbia already deals with these liability issues. It already deals with students it has identified as at-risk and will not seek help, Dr. Hendin said.

He added that implementing the questionnaire " is certainly worth the risk [of being sued] for the chance to save lives."

Dr. Eichler believes the process of getting the questionnaire approved is slow, but that the administration's fear of liability has nothing to do with it. "The next step right now is to solicit student input about the project," which would allow them to be more confident that it would be met with a positive response by students.

On the QT

Mr. Rickgarn said it is important to keep suicide at the front of the campus discussion. It is the second leading cause of death among college students.

"It's a major public health issue." If that many people were dying from a communicable disease, there would be a huge effort to eradicate it, he said. "But the stigma of mental illness keeps people silent about suicide."

"I think we should keep it a present issue," he said. "It's preventable."

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem," repeated those interviewed on a video shown at the discussion on  "Suicide: Awareness and Risk Factors" in March during Mental Health Awareness Week.  The message: depression is a leading cause of suicidality and very treatable.

Mr. Rickgarn also emphasized the importance of educating people on campus about the indicators that might suggest someone is considering suicide. "Many people hang back and don't take someone seriously," he said. "But no one wants to run the risk of being a survivor."

Dr. Hendin said that we need to create a climate wherein there are worse sins than violating someone's trust, and where suicidal thoughts are not considered a secret to be kept. "When someone has killed themselves it is usually their peers who new they were considering it. Often, though, they don't take them seriously or don't want to tell on them."

Erin Eckstein, CC '01, and Tanya Dantus, CC 01 wrote an email to administrators after Andrea Melendez's suicide last December. In it they said, "We need a public forum where members of our community can come together, to share their grief, to ask questions, receive information, to COMMUNICATE, and to engage in dialogue."

Many students have similarly expressed the desire to talk, perhaps not about the private details of each incident, but about the issue of suicide on this campus as a whole.

And while it is clear the administration acts to help those grieving, and counseling services extends its resources and staff to the utmost, on the level of education and awareness, there is still much to be done.