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Keith O'Donnell '09 died last night in Syracuse after a fall into Cascadilla Gorge early Saturday morning.</p>
<p>At 2:09 a.m. Saturday, the Ithaca Fire Department responded to a call and discovered O'Donnell, a 23-year-old junior in the School of Hotel Administration, on the stairs that lead into the gorge behind the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.</p>
<p>Cornell alum here (and I'm the mother of a current Cornell student as well).</p>
<p>This has happened before. It will happen again. </p>
<p>It is often assumed that all such deaths are suicides, but this is not true. Many are alcohol-related accidents. Drunk kids fool around on the bridges or near the sides of the gorges. Some of them fall. And some of them die.</p>
<p>Cornell's suicide rate, despite endless claims to the contrary, is NOT unusually high. </p>
<p>I'm not trying to minimize this tragedy in any way, just to point out that little is accomplished by trying to solve the wrong problem. There will be a lot of talk about suicides among college students in the coming days, but we should remember that this may have been an alcohol- or drug-related accident, not a suicide, and that these two types of problems must be attacked in different ways.</p>
<p>Marian - I kind of assumed this might be found to be alcohol related. As a parent, if I had a kid on that campus, who I knew regularly drank, I think I'd be nervous all the time; it doesn't take much of a wrong step in the wrong place to have disastrous consequences. My D, while adjusting to the steep hilly campus of Syracuse after coming from the flat lands of Illinois, broke her foot her freshman year, jumping up and down - and yes, was slightly inebriated when it happened. She probably wouldn't have been acting so animated had she not been under the influence. Thank God it was just a hill, and not a gorge next to her. Cornell, although one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen, will always be at risk for things like this happening as long as there are partying college students around and access to the gorges.</p>
<p>Steady up. She might have fallen for many possible reasons. It's worth discussing alcohol and drugs always as factors in accidents, in general, but we never know about a specific student. It's only natural, however, that such an accident would generate speculation about alcohol; I thought of it first before suicide entered my thoughts. </p>
<p>I still recall my cousin whose elder son was killed driving others home from a rock concert, and of the passengers, another also died. She said that the police told her, "You might be comforted to know there was no alcohol in his blood." She got angry (misplaced grief, we all understand) and said, "Of course; I knew that!" Hers was one of those rare kids for whom that was absolutely believable even before the testing. An accident can be an accident.</p>
<p>OTOH, I saw a serious documentary about emergency rooms (not the usual fare). A doctor specializing in emergency medicine was interviewed. He said (I parpahrase): "Fifty percent of what we do here is alcohol and drug related, but it won't make it into the statistics that way. You see that guy with the broken ankle? He was drunk and walking along a curb. All these stab wounds around the hands? People are drunk and trying to slice something in their kitchens." I never thought of it that way!</p>
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As a parent, if I had a kid on that campus, who I knew regularly drank, I think I'd be nervous all the time; it doesn't take much of a wrong step in the wrong place to have disastrous consequences.
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<p>It isn't even icy yet. Wait until winter.</p>
<p>I have a kid on that campus, but she doesn't drink. This, admittedly, is an atypical situation.</p>