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I'm sure you noticed how there are sudden outbreaks of what I can only call the "issue de jour." Same sex marriage, teenaged drinking (there's a shocker – college kids drink!), violent crime (and its connection to TV violence), world terrorism: they have all had their moment in the sun, with TV docudramas, newspaper and news magazine features, even feature films, all in rapid succession or even at the very same moment. We like to tell ourselves that MIT is utterly (and, in the end, benignly) unique, but we hardly escape.
Lately, suicide, especially among the young, has had its time on stage. And there was MIT, with a long two-part feature in The Boston Globe, full of (to me) contradictory statistics and heartrending individual tales.
I should lay my cards on the table – I've known two bright, talented Harvard undergraduates (or, to be precise, one sophomore and one fellow who was less than six months past his graduation) who killed themselves, and I don't for a moment pretend to understand it. Nor the death of one of my daughter's most loving and energetic daycare providers. Nor, surely if more distantly, the recent Westgate victim, with whom I did not in fact have any personal contact. Nor do I hear, amidst all the journalism and worrying, much clear advice about what can be done to forestall such horrors. One thing is clear – if recent articles in Tech Talk are any evidence, MIT undergraduates are convinced that we as an institution must do something.
But somehow it never quite gets on the agenda. Not too long ago I attended one of those "random" faculty dinners hosted by Jay Keyser, where Jay (as is his custom) threw the floor open over dessert. "What is on your mind?" The answer? Some anomalies in the MIT e-mail system and the operations of I/S, and the new "open course ware" Web initiative. I kept thinking, as I sat there, "Somebody has to bring up the s-word." I thought it was just my own Calvinist conscience; but as I rode home with a group of my colleagues, one of them said, "I kept wanting to bring up suicide." Why did neither of us screw up the courage?
Partly, I think, because all of us at MIT like to think of ourselves as problem-solvers, and so none of us feel very comfortable venturing into terrain where the map is cloudy. It's the same kind of intellectual, even moral, wariness that makes us rather prone to hide out within our own fiefdoms, and avoid venturing into other areas of learning. So why expect us to barge into a major psychic mystery?
And then too, what hope is there of concocting some viable "policy" about suicide on campus? Who would be covered – just currently-enrolled students? Pre-frosh visiting the place? Recent or long-ago graduates, back for another look? Passers-by, or guests (invited? uninvited?)?
A colleague of mine insists we need a "zero tolerance" policy on the matter. But surely we have one, already? Is it a bit too implicit? Do we really think that saying, at some formal gathering of each new freshman class, "Don't kill yourself, while you're here," would have any demonstrable effect?
But we are, all of us, good, damned good in fact, at solving intractable problems; so the fact that no resolution presents itself immediately hardly need be a disincentive. I've proposed to the Chair of the Faculty that suicide be put on the agenda of a faculty meeting, and soon; I invite my colleagues to join me in that request. Would not the mere fact that we, as a faculty in solemn conclave gathered, cherish our students enough to confront the self-inflicted death of even a handful of them (the statistics in the recent Boston Globe series were confusing and even contradictory as to the relative and absolute frequency of such acts on this campus)?
And, by way of framing the issue, I would offer one empirical observation, based on nearly 20 years on the MIT faculty. Let me approach it by way of an anecdote. At about the time Rodney King was assaulted by the Los Angeles Police Department, I was teaching a course in African-American history. Among the students in the class was a remarkable young man who, aside from an ability to read carefully, to think deeply, and to articulate his thoughts powerfully and lucidly, had what I can only call presence. He was the kind of person to whom, if you were in a crowded dining room and someone shouted "Fire," you would look for guidance about what to do.
He came to me, long after the end of the course (and after he had taken the responsibility for keeping order at the area-wide student demonstrations in support of Mr. King. You may recall that, despite extreme rage on the part of students from all over the greater Boston area, there was not a single instance of disorderly behavior), he came to ask if I would write him a recommendation for law school. I eagerly agreed, and then he went on, "But I'll never get in, of course."
I thought he was indulging in some sardonic joke. But he was deadly serious. Of course, he got into Michigan, Columbia, Chicago, and Harvard Law Schools. But he really believed he would be found unacceptable.
Think back, now – how many seniors have you encountered who really believe that they cannot get into a good graduate school, or find an acceptable job? I will be surprised if there are not a number of instances you can call to mind.
Which ("finally!" I can hear you saying) brings me to my point: somehow, and completely without conscious intention, MIT manages to leach away the self-esteem of its students. What is remarkable is that the sense of entitlement and even arrogance which makes them expect the rules to be adjusted to suit their needs remains remarkably intact.
But until and unless we manage to decipher what it is about this place that makes the brightest and most talented late adolescents in the known universe tend to think they are, at a fundamental level, relatively worthless, we will have the unhappy experience of picking up the paper, more often than we'd like, and seeing the headline: "MIT STUDENT VICTIM OF APPARENT SUICIDE."
Not an acceptable state of affairs, at least to me.
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