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The Sunday Read: ‘The Unthinkable Mental Health Crisis That Shook a New England College’

The Sunday Read: ‘The Unthinkable Mental Health Crisis That Shook a New England College’

The Daily vor 2 Jahren

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42:04

The first death happened before the academic year began. In July
2021, an undergraduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
was reported dead. The administration sent a notice out over
email, with the familiar, thoroughly vetted phrasing and appended
resources. Katherine Foo, an assistant professor in the
department of integrative and global studies, felt especially
crushed by the news. She taught this student. He was Chinese, and
she felt connected to the particular set of pressures he faced.
She read through old, anonymous course evaluations, looking for
any sign she might have missed. But she was unsure where to put
her personal feelings about a loss suffered in this professional
context.

The week before the academic year began, a second student died. A
rising senior in the computer-science department who loved
horticulture took his own life. This brought an intimation of
disaster. One student suicide is a tragedy; two might be the
beginning of a cluster. Some faculty members began to feel a
tinge of dread when they stepped onto campus.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts is a tidy New
England college campus with the high-saturation landscaping
typical of well-funded institutions. The hedges are beautifully
trimmed, the pathways are swept clean. Red-brick buildings from
the 19th century fraternize with high glass facades and renovated
interiors. But over a six-month period, the school was turned
upside down by a spate of suicides.

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