Posted on 11/07/2009 6:22:59 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A 20-year old student at New York University apparently took his own life on Tuesday morning, reviving concerns about the high number of suicides there in recent years.
University and police officials said the student, Andrew E. Williamson-Noble, a junior from Irvington, N.Y., jumped from the 10th floor to the lobby at the Bobst Library about 4:30 a.m.
John Sexton, the university’s president, said in an e-mail message to students and the faculty that “indications are that he took his own life.”
Mr. Williamson-Noble was found on his back; a suicide note was later discovered in his room, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing an ongoing investigation.
At least nine students at N.Y.U. have committed suicide since 2002, including four in 2004. In an effort to curb the problem, university officials made several changes in 2005, including the installation of plexiglass panels around the perimeter of the atrium of Bobst Library, where two students had jumped to their deaths. The university also restricted access to balconies, expanded counseling services and created a 24-hour hot line that students could call about suicide concerns.
The plexiglass panels — which are about eight feet high — apparently did not prevent Mr. Williamson-Noble from jumping to his death.
“If you come to Bobst regularly you can probably find spaces on the stairs, but you would have to be pretty determined,” said Paige Collins, a 19-year-old student, standing outside the library. “It would take a while to climb over.”
Ms. Collins said students were not allowed above the second floor after 1 a.m. Security guards patrol the area, she said, but the elevators are not shut down.
“We heard about it in my last class,” Brooke Asemota, 19, said
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is the result of mentally unstable people having access to high floors in buildings- we have to get these multi-storied structures off the streets.
Couldnt be the culture of death they are building.
Its probably in the health care bill between forgiving vetrinarian debts and sewer systems for indian reservations.
The strange thing is this -— why do ONLY NYU students commit suicides ? There are many colleges in NYC but it only happens in NYU.
Is there some special pressure that the university is putting students through that’s different from other schools ?
In an effort to curb the problem, university officials made several changes in 2005, including the installation of plexiglass panels around the perimeter of the atrium of Bobst Library, where two students had jumped to their deaths. The university also restricted access to balconies, expanded counseling services and created a 24-hour hot line that students could call about suicide concerns.
Well the counseling services and "hot line" sound like they may be helpful.
But erecting physical barriers and obstructions is pretty pointless, unless you're trying to prevent accidental deaths.
If someone is suicidal, they're going to find a way to do it no matter what kind of physical barriers you erect.
There have been plenty of suicides by students of Cornell over the years. There was a gorge/ravine that lent itself to use by those who wanted to act on their impulse.
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Per my friends, there is a large drug culture there and certain drugs cause much suicidal ideation.
Actually, 9 students isn't that much of a trend...but there is still a very unhealthy drug culture at NYU and even one life lost is a great tragedy.
That said, NYU is in NYC, and NYC is all about ambition...and ambition (beyond just achievement) is, in and off itself, a dangerous and destabilizing thing.
NYC life is all about reaching for the gold ring. The gold ring (for many people) means a discarding of spirituality in favor of embracing human/secular achievement.
IMO, the gold ring is demonic.
For them, it was also a rejection of God!
The homosexual mafia is big in the area around NYU. A student who needed and wanted psychological help to go straight would probably have nowhere to turn for help in such a politically correct environment as that at NYU and could become despondent and isolated enough to take his own life.
The homosexual mafia is big in the area around NYU. A student who needed and wanted psychological help to go straight would probably have nowhere to turn for help in such a politically correct environment as that at NYU and could become despondent and isolated enough to take his own life.
RIP.
So very sad for his family.
That's frankly offensive. In a setting like this, that's not doing anything to prevent suicides, it's just preventing the suicides from being on campus, where they're a bigger PR problem for NYU. If these kids want to commit suicide, they have 24/7 access to a subway station and can jump in front of a train.
It’s the second most “elite” college in NYC, after Columbia, so presumably has a lot of students who have been high-pressure over-achievers for a long time. Not sure what the pattern has been in terms of ages, but I think freshman and into early sophomore year are tough for a lot of students who were pushed into a lifetime of slaving away to get straight As, take lots of AP courses, score high on the SATs, excel in extracurricular activities, all to get into the almighty “good college”. It has to be a huge letdown when they get there, and even more so when they start to realize they’re no longer at the top of the competitive heap and never will be again no matter how hard they work. A kid who had to work hard for straight As at the vast majority of high schools has no chance of achieving anything of the sort at NYU (or Columbia) — it’s a tough fact of life to swallow for a young adult whose whole life and ego was built around academic competition.
I’m not sure what the Columbia suicide stats are. Some colleges are better than others at suppressing publicity about these things. I went to a small, but highly ranked college and there were several students in my freshman class who were sent home during their first semester due to depression. One was kept in the hospital until her parents showed up to accompany her home. Columbia may just be better than NYU at getting students off campus and officially off the school’s student roster before they kill themselves. My college sure seemed to have an aggressive program of that sort — I worried that some of these students were more likely to actually commit suicide because they’d been forcibly ejected from college (and sent home to where they’d so recently been telling everybody they knew how thrilled they were to be heading off to this great college), than they were if they’d stayed at college in dorms where somebody is awake and available to talk to virtually 24/7, and with a lightened course load to take some of the pressure off.
I was one of those folks you talked about. I worked hard for As in high school and got into my fabulous school. I was clinically depressed in second year, and what helped was indeed, staying there and lightening the load. Enough to keep me on this side of the line.
It also helped finding Christ.
You want to prevent suicide? Make sure the person has someone there who cares about him. You can be at the bottom of the barrel, but so long as someone cares, that person will be ok.
I didn’t try, until I lost my person, and that was years after I left.
I’m glad you pulled through and are here to tell us about it. I don’t have children yet, but am planning to, and I have a very firm resolve that they will never get any messages at home that they have to achieve, achieve, achieve to be “successful”, and I’ll do my best to steer them clear of such messages from other sources until they’re old enough to understand why it’s a nightmarish trap.
Yeah, so am I. Things would have gotten very bad over this stretch if I wasn’t here. My father passed away last december.
Puts a different spin on things that’s for sure. I was so angry at first, because this was supposed to be the good times after all our struggles. But he did get to see me graduate. I would have loved to have him see me get married, and his grandkiddos.
If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you ma’am? You have your head on your shoulders.
Not really. The world is permanently screwed up.
fill it in
lets do somethin bout that
BTW there are survey instruments that can very accurately predict the liklihood of an Adverse Academic Event that could be used to determine which matriculants are the most at risk.
What does the likelihood of an “Adverse Academic Event” have to do with it? Most students won’t commit (or even contemplate) killing themselves over even their own definition of an “Adverse Academic Event”. And different students have widely differing notions of what sort of academic event is even a serious problem. For some, an A- on a midterm is a total disaster (I’ve actually seen a kid in tears over an A- on a Gen Chem midterm, begging the professor for fewer points to be deducted for this or that error). For others, nothing short of flunking out of school is seen as a disaster.
Hmm... that’s a good point. I guess my take is that some analysis of a student’s maturity and mental health before admittance could do wonders for avoidance of this kind of thing. And, severe depression, flunking out - these things aren’t good even if the student does not end life. I don’t think admissions committees want to do this kind of evaluation. But, if retrospective analysis can demonstrate the efficacy of this kind of survey, then why not? Well, because the students would be prone to lie on the test, that’s why. Good point. I’m sure controls were put in place but I don’t know what they were.
You’re forgetting the ADA. A school is no more allowed to exclude a student based on the disability of mental illness, than on the disability of a limp. And you’re forgetting HIPPA. A school has no right to see a student’s or prospective student’s medical records. The only exception is when a physician or counselor classifies the student as an *immediate* danger to self or others. And most students who are actually on the verge of committing suicide (or murder) don’t stop by the college health center to run the idea by a counselor first.
How do you think the patently insane Mr. Cho got into, and stayed in Virginia Tech?
Well.... welll... well.... that’s just crazy.
Yep. And deadly too.
Not to make light of suicide but............. these were, um, severely depressed med students, gone insane over the loss of their future plans thanks to Obamacare, RIGHT?????
ping
Well, it’s sad.... but it’s not that many, when all is said and done. I think most big-city high schools have a higher suicide rate.
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