Arts Quad Love-In to Raise Spirits in Wake of Recent Suicides
On Tuesday, Cornell made the front page of the New York Times. With three very public student suicides in the gorges in the last month, two on consecutive days last week, we’ve hit six suspected suicides since August. With a national average that should put us at fewer than two annually, we’ve officially entered what’s called a “suicide cluster”—that is, a so-called “contagious” string of suicides.
And Cornell’s response? In the short run, they have posted guards on every bridge, effective through the end of this week. You can find them out all night, looking bored and a little chilly in reflective vests. On Saturday, Susan Murphy, Vice President for Student and Academic Affairs, called an emergency meeting of student leaders that included the heads of the Student Assembly, Interfraternity Council, and Inter-Cooperative Council, among others. She also issued a video address, emailed to every student amongst a flurry of press releases and mental health infographics. You can’t walk across the bridges anymore without passing inspirational chalk and strewn flowers. The other day, a random boy offered me a Hershey’s Kiss at the end of the Thurston Avenue Bridge.
But the culmination of Cornell’s response to the suicides occurred this afternoon with a much-publicized event on the Arts Quad entitled “Lift Your Spirits: A Cornell Community Gathering.”
The Facebook event, with 2, 353 confirmed guests, read “In light of recent events on our campus, the Cornell community is coming together this Wednesday to reflect on recent tragedies, remind ourselves of the importance of life, and to celebrate ourselves, our school, and most important, members of our community. This will be a time for organic self-expression, release, and relaxation.” With an unusually sunny day and temperatures in the high fifties, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of people who turned out—but the crowds on the Arts Quad far exceeded my (albeit somewhat cynical) expectations.
Some just came for the free cookies, cotton candy, and popcorn, but others stuck around. Scattered tables featured booths from the Suicide Prevention Crisis Service, Cornell EARS, and Cornell Minds Matter. President Skorton took the stage and urged students to “Reach out and touch someone.” Student performances included various a cappella groups and the breakdancing troop Absolute Zero. Skorton returned to the stage to conclude the ceremonies by joined the Chorus and leading the crowd in singing Cornell’s Alma Mater.
Also present at the event were representatives from NBC and Fox News—because apparently, now that we’ve made the New York Times, we’re a big deal. I was eerily reminded of the 1980’s dark comedy Heathers—when the high school responds to several “suicides” with a shallow-feeling press gala in the school cafeteria. The event was ostensibly about raising morale on campus—but it was also a convenient large-scale message to the outside world from the administration, and felt like a desperate cry of “look, we’re doing something!” Opinion among student attendees was mostly positive, but some questioned whether the event would effectively discourage suicides. A proposed event to chalk the bridges in uplifting slogans was abandoned due to critiques that it would come off as cheapened propaganda, exacerbating the existing problems and serving as a constant reminder of the bridges’ potential as suicide weapons.
A lot of students don’t see the big deal. Cornell has earned a name as a suicide school, but we were at roughly the national average of suicides until 2005, and then had none between 2006 and early fall this year. Since then, there have been ten student deaths, with six being investigated as suicides. The first three occurred last semester, and little to nothing was known about them. Because of the public nature of gorge suicides, however, Cornell has had to take a more public stance on the three since February. Part of the issue is parental wishes—many families ask that Cornell respect their privacy and not broadcast the details of a child’s suicide to Cornell’s population of 20,000. Now that we’ve reached cluster status, though, the University can no longer afford to respect their wishes. When you have to send the entire freshman class on a detour around the Thurston Avenue Bridge so that you can bring up a body bag, ignoring the issue is not really an option.
Hence the public love-in. We’ve been bombarded by sympathetic messages from teachers and advisors all week, if we’ve had time to read them between prelims and last-minute packing for spring break. The general atmosphere was certainly festive, though, so maybe they achieved exactly what they set out to do. Or maybe it was just the weather, some of the first blue skies we’ve had since October. We’ll see how the good spirits hold when it snows next week.
April 1st, 2010 at 10:34 am
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