<p>^
From: [Privacy</a> vs. protection / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com](<a href=“Privacy vs. protection - CSMonitor.com”>Privacy vs. protection - CSMonitor.com)</p>
<p>bumping this thread again</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.law.suffolk.edu/highlights/stuorgs/lawreview/documents/Gearan_Note_Final.pdf[/url]”>http://www.law.suffolk.edu/highlights/stuorgs/lawreview/documents/Gearan_Note_Final.pdf</a></p>
<p>Heads up, Caltech: Maybe you need a new paradigm…</p>
<p>[Retaining</a> the STEM Dropouts | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/retaining-stem-dropouts]Retaining”>Retaining the STEM Dropouts)</p>
<p>[Student</a> deaths less common than estimates suggest, study finds | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/07/student-deaths-less-common-estimates-suggest-study-finds]Student”>Student deaths less common than estimates suggest, study finds)</p>
<p>To say that the number of deaths, especially those by suicide, is lower in the comparable age cohort off-campus may be true, but it is a smoke screen tactic to absolve universities of the moral responsibility for reducing the number of these deaths on college campuses. According to Kay Redfield Jamison, Head of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, we cannot save every suicidally ill person, but we can save many more. Not calling parents, for instance, when an undergraduate attempts suicide on campus is unconscionable, and no amount of statistical evidence will ever convince me that not calling parents is anything but morally repugnant. Colleges need to notify parents when a tax-dependent student has attempted suicide on campus. I wish I could make it law. I tried through case law, but got nowhere. How did colleges come to have so much power over us and the lives of our children?</p>
<p>"[tradition and inertia are very difficult to overcome, even though everyone knows there is a problem…] " </p>
<p>Read more: [Retaining</a> the STEM Dropouts | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“Retaining the STEM Dropouts”>Retaining the STEM Dropouts)
Inside Higher Ed</p>
<p>I’m wondering why the college suicide protocol featured in the link below has students call 911 if they even suspect that the person will attempt suicide, while Caltech does not have students call 911–they still state on their counseling center website to call an on-campus number. Why? It is my strong opinion that they want to circle wagons and control the spin and the risk–and they played Russian roulette with my son’s life. <a href=“Page Not Found - Columbia College Chicago”>http://www.colum.edu/stude​nts/Health/PDF_Folder/Suic​idePrevBklt08.pdf</a></p>
<p>In general, one does not dial 911 at Caltech because the emergency services do not know the names of the buildings and stuff. Instead you dial x5000 (security) and they call and handle the police or fire department or whatever for you, guiding them to your location.</p>
<p>Yeah, this is pretty much standard protocol for all emergency situations at Caltech, from chemical spills to fires to suspicious people on campus. Local police and safety personnel don’t know their way around campus, so the general recommendation is to call campus police and they’ll notify emergency personnel. This is likely because non-Caltech people will use the 1200 E California Blvd address, which isn’t really that close to anything on campus.</p>
<p>WeAreFive-- do you think you might want to continue this conversation in a new thread? Right now, people who may want to read the things you are talking about won’t necessarily know to read this thread, given that we’ve somewhat moved beyond the original topic of discussion.</p>
<p>This doesn’t sound good. Is Caltech unusual in their handling of emergencies?</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t sound good, does it? Don’t you think this should be investigated? lizzardfire, how exactly does this not follow the thread of this discussion if the title of the thread is “Why Caltech is different–an open letter”? I have stated that other colleges have explicit information on their websites to call 911 if a campus member suspects another campus member of being in imminent danger of suicide. Caltech does not. That’s one way they’re different. The University of Maryland, College Park, says on their counseling center website, and I paraphrase, “If you are suicidal and you cannot or will not go to the hospital, you will be taken there to get the care you need.” Do you know what that means in legal terms? It means that the University of Maryland would rather be sued for saving an undergrad’s life than for ignoring an undergrad’s life. Do you know what Caltech told its student body after my son’s death and the cluster of suicide deaths that followed? (This information is from a prof at Caltech, who told his wife, whose wife knows a friend of mine; she told my friend, my friend told me.) He said that Caltech said that if the student (even though he attempted suicide, reported his own suicide attempt, told counselors and university officials he had written a suicide note, continued to ideate with friends who were trained undergraduate counselors, wrote in an e-mail to the counselor when asking for an appointment that he did not have the will to go on, told a friend that he said he wasn’t suicidal but had lied, friend’s mother who lived locally called multiple times to protect her daughter who was getting sick trying to help my son and trying to get more help for my son), mentally ill though he or she might be at the time (they do not have to diagnose in on-campus counseling centers by California law) says he doesn’t want to go to the hospital for suicide watch, they honor that wish, and they do not notify parents. Case closed, according to them. And everyone at the college, I guess, breathes a sigh of relief? So, that’s another way they’re different. I think that this is extremely important information for parents to know before they send their child to this school. It is delineating exactly how Caltech is different. And, for me,it jibes very much with how another institution in the news lately handled a serious situation: They met the legal standard, but failed miserably at meeting the moral standard. Caltech may not have felt a duty to notify, but I feel that I do indeed have a duty to notify about their lack of feeling a duty to notify.</p>
<p>And do you know how small the Caltech campus is? It’s small. Give the police and the EMTs in Pasadena, itself a small town, a map of the campus. It cannot be that difficult to find the building where my son got up on the roof and for an hour and a half threatened to jump off head first. I’ve looked at maps of the campus myself and don’t think I’d have any problem finding it, especially if the life of a human being were at stake. This is all about control and protection of the institution, ladies and gentlemen. Please investigate this school and its policies. And please be wary of sending your child to school here before checking out how they would handle an emergency situation of any sort.</p>
<p>Taking a look at my undergrad school (Carnegie Mellon), they have a similar policy for alerting campus authorities before calling 911, as odds are they’ll have a much faster response time and will be able to direct additional help where it needs to go, if needed. Meanwhile, right down the street, the University of Pittsburgh says to call 911. Why? CMU’s campus is mostly enclosed by a few blocks with only campus-access roads to get to the majority of buildings. Pitt is all on city roads which are well labelled and easily accessible. I’m pretty sure Caltech has the same protocol as CMU because it’s difficult to get to most of their buildings. Also, heck, as someone that’s been at Caltech for over four years now, I still don’t know half the campus, and I certainly wouldn’t want to have to try and navigate it while driving a fire engine during an emergency situation (not to mention there may be pylons up on pathways to prevent vehicular traffic that need to be put down by campus personnel).</p>
<p>I realize it must be tragic to lose someone in your family to such a heart-breaking event, but in reality, Caltech has a lower suicide rate than the average college out there (even with it’s high stress levels), has very little stigma associated with seeking mental health assistance, and, in general, is an extremely safe environment for a student to be (as are pretty much all colleges that attract the caliber of students that Caltech).</p>
<p>I beg to differ. My son’s friend was a trained EMT for the Carnegie Mellon campus. He said that if a student so much as said that he or she was suicidal, they (the EMTs) were obliged to take him or her to the hospital.
RacinReaver, your institution made grievous moral errors in not doing more for my son. When people trot out statistics about the fact that a school has fewer than average suicides when my son’s life could have been saved had even one of the many trained professionals or students called three little numbers: 9-1-1, I get sick to my stomach. You have no idea what it feels like to have lost a child to suicide. It is another layer of hell altogether when one realizes how very negligent the college was and how immoral its administrators. Talk to me when you have children, you send them off healthy to campus, and that child’s ashes are returned to you–and then you find out so many knew the danger he was in, they were allowed to call under FERPA but did not or could have initiated a voluntary hold but did not. Stop making excuses for your school. They were wrong. Case closed.</p>
<p>I want to understand this. Please explain what FERPA is and how Caltech could have acted despite FERPA but did not. What can a parent do at any school regarding FERPA?</p>
<p>WeAreFive, I cannot imagine what you are going through. I am so terribly, terribly sorry for your loss. No words can comfort you but I am praying for you and your family, though I don’t know you. </p>
<p>One of my closest friends lost her son to suicide but he had struggled with mental illness for a while; the system could do nothing for him though all the warning signs were there and he’d attempted before. But, he was not in a college setting. Mental illness has many stigmas attached to it but it needs to be brought out in the open more.</p>
<p>Is Caltech really that different from the majority of colleges? I hate reading about suicides. I believe an MIT student died a few weeks ago but I didn’t hear ultimately what happened. Society, colleges, want our kids to function as adults and detach from parents. I ask why is it so important to keep families out of the loop?</p>
<p>Here’s a fairly old law review article that explains FERPA. Next I’ll post the report to then President Bush after the Virginia Tech shootings.
<a href=“http://www.law.suffolk.edu/highlights/stuorgs/lawreview/documents/Gearan_Note_Final.pdf[/url]”>http://www.law.suffolk.edu/highlights/stuorgs/lawreview/documents/Gearan_Note_Final.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.hhs.gov/vtreport.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hhs.gov/vtreport.pdf</a>
sbjdorlo, I don’t know what was going through their heads, but being on the roof for an hour and a half saying he wanted to jump off head first and all the other red flags mentioned above were apparently not deemed enough of an emergency by them to notify us. I believe they did not issue an involuntary hold because then a “special relationship” with the patient is established. Once that is established and the patient goes on to end his or her life in hospital or after release, it opens the college up to possible litigation and once a “special relationship” has been established, there is stronger legal foundation. There is only one legal precedent that I know of that found a college guilty of negligence and wrongful death when a student committed suicide, and that is “Ferrum v. Schieszler” in Virginia. Had Caltech notified us (the moral thing to have done), and had my son been angry that they had done so, he could not have sued (one cannot sue for a “violation” of FERPA, but if enough violations occur, a college can lose federal funding. However, a relaxing in 1997 of what constituted a violation gave colleges much more freedom to notify parents.)
I know that some people with severe enough mental illnesses cannot be saved, but many more could be saved. They should have erred on the side of safety, and they did not. Here’s what one psychiatrist said: “Privacy isn’t everything; life is everything.”</p>