A couple weeks ago, we got a special digest email at work. It talked about an \u201cincident\u201d that morning in the parking deck, that police and medical examiners were on scene, but no foul play was suspected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then it linked to student support services for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was it. \u00a0 No detail, no explanation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On our social media, there was a post about how \u201cwe\u2019re family, if you need help, click here\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From that, I guessed it was something that had happened to a student.\u00a0 And that it was bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I headed next to the local newspaper online where they reported a possible suicide at that location – and then those same links to student services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, there was my answer.\u00a0 One of our students had taken their own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been at UA for over 20 years and when something like this happens, even if I don\u2019t know the student, my heart breaks. \u00a0 A couple years ago, a student accidentally killed another student – and one of my assistants at the time knew the people involved.\u00a0 \u00a0 She was devastated and broke down in tears in my office when she tried to talk about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
College life is about a lot of things, including potential.\u00a0 Students with big, world-changing ideas and plans. There\u2019s a lot of hope there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for one of our own that day, there was only despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sat there in my office for a few minutes, just thinking.\u00a0 I set aside my emails and projects and\u2026 dwelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I work with the people that wrote UA\u2019s response and I give them credit for the way they handled things with a mix of kindness and professional detachment. \u00a0 We are a large organization with a lot of audiences and crafting the right message couldn\u2019t have been easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no mention of the word.\u00a0 It was the \u201cincident\u201d. And there are a lot of reasons to avoid \u201cthe word\u201d, but not saying it does, I think, a disservice to what this person went through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe we could have said the word.\u00a0 Maybe acknowledging that a student had committed suicide could have opened up a dialog.\u00a0 Could have brought people forward to get the help they need in a way that innocuous obfuscation and links couldn\u2019t have. \u00a0 And maybe helped us come together and mourn that loss of potential – and the life of our student and what they meant to the people around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I sit here, an \u201carmchair quarterback\u201d with a cooling cup of tea on a fall day, glad I didn\u2019t have to write those notes and also unfairly second-guessing the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know the student nor their friends, nor teachers, nor co-workers, nor family. But my heart goes out to them and I share, in a small way, their loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple weeks ago, we got a special digest email at work. It talked about an \u201cincident\u201d that morning in the parking deck, that police and medical examiners were on scene, but no foul play was suspected. And then it linked to student support services for help. That was it. \u00a0 No detail, no explanation.\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2533,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2532\/revisions\/2533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}