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A University Is Threatening to Punish Students Who Discuss Their Suicidal Thoughts With Friends
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/09/a-school-is-threatening-to-punish-its-suicidal-students.htmlThe letter was confusing for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Klawes hadn’t even mentioned feeling suicidal during her counseling. For another, it seemed to be saying that she could get in disciplinary trouble simply for talking to her friends about how she was feeling in the aftermath of her assault, which was troubling. So Klawes quickly replied to Brundage, seeking clarification: “I was also wondering if I respond to concerned people, is that enough to get me in trouble?” she wrote. “I do not want to worry others by not responding and I do not want to have the possibility of getting expelled by reaching out to my friends during this emotionally trying time and I see the possibility of misunderstanding or getting more concerned.” In her response Brundage reiterated exactly which subjects Klawes was prohibited from discussing with friends: “You can certainly talk to your friends about how you are doing in general and set their minds at ease. You cannot discuss with other students suicidal or self-destructive thoughts or actions. It is a very specific limitation.”
As it turns out, Klawes was just one of dozens of NMU students, if not more, who have been told over the years that they could face disciplinary action for discussing their suicidal thoughts, according to an investigation and press release just published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The ostensible goal of the policy is to “protect” students from other students’ suicidal thoughts and actions. But this policy, in addition to violating students’ free-speech rights, could also be doing serious harm to vulnerable students at NMU, according to mental-health experts.
After FIRE first caught wind of NMU’s policy and gathered some information about it, a senior program officer there, Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon, sent NMU’s president, Fritz J. Erickson, and several other NMU administrators a letter, on August 25, laying out the recent history of the policy, and alerting administrators that it both — in FIRE’s view — violated students’ free-speech rights by prohibiting them from engaging in private discussions about a particular subject, and posed a potential mental-health risk in light of what researchers know about suicide risk factors. (The above emails, and much of the background information in this article, come from FIRE’s letter, which notes that as a public university NMU has stricter rules on its ability to curtail student speech than a private school would.)...
NMU’s policy is much different, much less common — it’s unclear any other American university does this, though I’ll update this article if similar policies are churned up by the wake of this article and FIRE’s report — and far more restrictive. According to Schwartz, it likely stems from a misunderstanding about how suicide “works.” “I suspect that the school may be trying to address an overly concrete understanding of the notion of contagion in a problematic way,” he said. “They are thinking that students talking to each other about suicidal ideas will lead to the student hearing to be at more risk for suicide — [but] except for extremely rare occurrence of ‘suicide pacts’ (usually young people deciding to die together — think Romeo and Juliet) the idea of people hearing about a suicidal friend leading them to suicide is extraordinarily unlikely.”
As it turns out, Klawes was just one of dozens of NMU students, if not more, who have been told over the years that they could face disciplinary action for discussing their suicidal thoughts, according to an investigation and press release just published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The ostensible goal of the policy is to “protect” students from other students’ suicidal thoughts and actions. But this policy, in addition to violating students’ free-speech rights, could also be doing serious harm to vulnerable students at NMU, according to mental-health experts.
After FIRE first caught wind of NMU’s policy and gathered some information about it, a senior program officer there, Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon, sent NMU’s president, Fritz J. Erickson, and several other NMU administrators a letter, on August 25, laying out the recent history of the policy, and alerting administrators that it both — in FIRE’s view — violated students’ free-speech rights by prohibiting them from engaging in private discussions about a particular subject, and posed a potential mental-health risk in light of what researchers know about suicide risk factors. (The above emails, and much of the background information in this article, come from FIRE’s letter, which notes that as a public university NMU has stricter rules on its ability to curtail student speech than a private school would.)...
NMU’s policy is much different, much less common — it’s unclear any other American university does this, though I’ll update this article if similar policies are churned up by the wake of this article and FIRE’s report — and far more restrictive. According to Schwartz, it likely stems from a misunderstanding about how suicide “works.” “I suspect that the school may be trying to address an overly concrete understanding of the notion of contagion in a problematic way,” he said. “They are thinking that students talking to each other about suicidal ideas will lead to the student hearing to be at more risk for suicide — [but] except for extremely rare occurrence of ‘suicide pacts’ (usually young people deciding to die together — think Romeo and Juliet) the idea of people hearing about a suicidal friend leading them to suicide is extraordinarily unlikely.”
What could go wrong?
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