<p>POIH, this was all debated on the other thread that was closed in deference to the respect that a young woman has died a tragic death. Others replied to you there and I stayed out of it. I agreed with so much of what I read in their replies. You don’t know who is to blame (IF ANYONE in the first place as sometimes accidents happen even with the best precautions in place, the most funding, the brightest people, etc.), as the accident hasn’t even been fully investigated yet. We don’t know if there was something negligent on the school’s part or the student’s part or just a very freak thing that could not be avoided. We don’t know YET. You are drawing your own conclusions on that matter. Further, such an accident, in my view, would mean nothing different to me had it happened at a school that is not your “HYPSM” (never heard of that acronym until CC!). Even a less endowed college should, and usually does, have safety protocols in place. You also wrote elsewhere that you might expect this from students who were not as bright as students at Yale or some such. Oh please. I can’t even go there. Ya know, my D2, who many tell me they find to be “brilliant” (I can say this as her mom but honestly have heard this from many), had a terrible accident and could have died (we are so lucky she survived). It can happen to anyone. It’s just as terrible when it happens to a community college student too. </p>
<p>I stayed out of the other discussion and likely will be sorry I posted on this thread. </p>
<p>As an aside, totally unrelated to this thread (SORRY to others), but I just have to tell you POIH, you were on my mind this week before reading these CC threads. My D who was in grad school chose to withdraw from MIT (oh, the horrors, imagine her opting to leave one of the tippy top grad programs in her field voluntarily!!) to pursue a specialty within her field and apply to grad programs for the fall in that specialized field. There are not many programs in the country in her specialty and so she only applied to a few and was very lucky to be admitted to them with such low acceptance rates. Guess what? She just turned down Stanford with a very large scholarship. All I could think of was you in that regard. She picked the best fit (another very selective program) and did not pick the HYPSM school (which also had the largest scholarship). I figure you would l think she was nuts. We are fully behind the great choice she made (another top program in this specialty, but it is not part of the HYPSM acronym). Now back to our regularly scheduled program. :D</p>