There is hope!

Facts and Figures

• (A Boston Globe study of college suicides, 1990-2001) Of the 12 schools that made data available [including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, University of Michigan, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign], MIT had the highest suicide rate: 10.2 per 100,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The only direct comparison for the 12 could be made counting all students. MIT also provided a breakdown of its undergraduate suicides, where the rate was 20.6. Most other colleges had fewer than 7 suicides per 100,000, closer to the average for all colleges. The rate at Harvard, with total annual enrollment of about 18,500, was 7.4, with 15 suicides since 1990. The rate at Johns Hopkins was 7, and at Cornell, 5.7. At some public universities that compete for students with MIT, incident rates were also lower: The University of Michigan, which enrolls about 37,000 students a year, had a rate of 2.5. [ref]
• 74% of students surveyed by the [2001] MIT task force said they had an emotional problem that interfered with their daily lives. [ref]
• MIT officially acknowledges 47 student suicides from 1964-2000. [ref]
• Suicide rates per 100,000 student-years during the period of 1964 to 2000:

  	National Average	MIT Undergraduate	MIT Undergraduate + Graduate
  1964-2000	11.7	21.2	14.6
  1995-2000	12.0	18.1	10.1

  [ref]
• The national campus suicide rate is estimated at 7.5 per 100,000 students. [ref]
• National suicide rates in 2004:

  Group	Suicides per 100,000
  Non-Hispanic Whites	12.9
  American Indian and Alaska Natives	12.4
  Non-Hispanic Blacks	5.3
  Asian and Pacific Islanders	5.8
  Hispanics	5.9
  Young adults ages 20-24	12.5
  Males ages 20-24	> 21.4
  Females ages 20-24	< 3.6

  [ref]
• Women report attempting suicide during their lifetime about three times as often as men [ref]
• Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgendered individuals had 6 times the national suicide rate. [ref]
• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24 after unintentional injuries and homicides. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group [ref, ref]
• In 1995, 10.3% of U.S. undergraduate college students had seriously considered committing suicide in the last 12 months. [ref]
• studies suggest that suicide survivors often experience more guilt, rejection, shame, and isolation than those who grieve other deaths. If they have spent years dealing with a relative bent on an escalating course of self-destruction, they may also feel relief. Some studies have found that family members bereaved by suicide feel worse about themselves and are viewed more negatively by others. In a 1993 study, wives who had lost their husbands to suicide were seen as more psychologically disturbed, less likable and more blameworthy than wives whose husbands had died from heart attacks or in accidents. Suicide survivors themselves have an elevated risk of suicide, and according to some studies are more vulnerable to depression, a risk factor for suicide. In a 1996 study, Dr. David A. Brent, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, and his colleagues found higher levels of depression in the siblings of adolescent suicide victims six months after the death, and in the mothers of the victims one year afterward, compared with a control group. At three years, the siblings were no more depressed than a control group, but the mothers were still having difficulty. [ref]
• Dates of official MIT suicides gatherd from: [ref]

MIT Suicides

Search the Tech archives for suicides

• 2007-Jan-05 Henning Friedrich G
• 2006-Feb-28 Pushpinder Singh, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate
  • Singh, 33, was found dead in his apartment as a result of an apparent suicide [ref]
  • "will be remembered as brilliant and enthusiastic about learning, yet humble and kind" [ref]
  • Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Professor Gerald J. Sussman '68 described meeting Singh 13 years ago and seeing him in his classes over the years. Singh "showed up at my office all the time until recently, he said. Sussman said that Push's work was a breath of fresh air, and although it's been a rough time for all of us Push would not want us to be miserable. [ref]
  • Glorianna Davenport, a Media Lab principal research associate, described Singh's gregarious nature, as he would sit in common area waiting for some unsuspecting person to come by with whom to have a conversation.[ref]
  • "While I didn't know him as well as Marvin, Henry, and the many students, faculty, and friends he had at MIT and beyond, I can't believe I'll never get a chance to pursue these ideas with this talented young scientist. He will be missed." [ref]
  • "None of us will ever adapt to this loss. Push served as a model of intellectual power, kindness and honesty," wrote Marvin Minsky, professor of media arts and sciences emeritus at MIT. Minsky was Singh's advisor and mentor for many years. "He was like a comet lighting up the intellectual sky with his brilliant, deep ideas and his beautiful personality. His blazing trail remains in his many writings, publications, notes and in the memory networks of his friends. We were all just beginning to know the range and the depth of his ideas." [ref]
  • He was named one of the "IEEE Intelligent Systems 10 to Watch," an award that honors young researchers in artificial intelligence. He planned to take a faculty position at the Media Lab this fall. [ref]
  • There has been some public note of the similarity between the suicide of Push and that of another more renegade AI Researcher a couple months earlier, Chris McKinstry. [ref]
  • "We think that the future of AI is to get the public involved," said Push Singh, an MIT graduate student in AI who runs a Media Lab project called OpenMind. Singh said that the public involvement that McKinstry has been able to spur so far -- Mindpixel already has almost 20,000 registered users -- would be an asset to OpenMind. Like Mindpixel, OpenMind is an AI machine that learns from user input. At the OpenMind website, users are presented with a series of stimuli -- photographs, phrases, or diagrams. Singh said that the computer learns "common sense" from users' aggregate response to a certain stimulus. But when Singh heard about McKinstry's project, and saw that it had already amassed a database of more than 175,000 mindpixels, he thought that OpenMind would benefit from a collaboration with it. According to both Singh and McKinstry, the OpenMind and the Mindpixel projects will tie their databases together "at the back end." This means that any user data entered into either of the projects will be accessible by the other. Despite their collaboration, McKinstry and Singh each had no problem saying that the other's project is, ultimately, a lost cause. ... Despite their differences, though, both scientists said that they thought the other's heart was in the right place. And neither doubted that each project -- and, if the machines come alive, mankind itself -- would benefit from this collaboration, this true meeting of databases. [ref]
  • Push was slated to begin a position as a faculty member in the MIT Media Laboratory in 2007 after, as he described it to me, a much-needed year off "to think." [ref]
  • ...Push Singh, former AI researcher at MIT and one of the kindest and gentlest souls I have ever known. Push wished to pursue the task of classical artificial intelligence: to create the intelligence of an individual human being fully in silicon. Unlike previous researchers, he began modeling "common-sense," and hoped to build emotions and social behavior in these simulated agents. Yet, did they ever provide him anything except a cold and mechanical embrace? What future did he discern in these simulations? Did he come to the understanding that computers are not humans themselves, and their silicon intelligence is in-of-itself inhuman? I remember arguing with him in Marvin Minsky's living room, defending my thesis that computers are not replacements for humans, but computer are complementary to humans. Did he discover humanity in his machines, or did he surrender to the inscrutable difference that separated him from his silicon creation? We shall never know, for he took his own life for reasons that can only haunt our imaginations. [ref]
• 2005-Feb-28 Zhenxiu Mao G
  • the death of graduate student Zhenxiu Mao is a "suspected suicide." Mao, a first-year math graduate student, was found dead in his apartment. [ref]
  • Willy Lensch (downstairs neighbor): I used to live downstairs from Mao. Even after he died and Guofang moved away, I still lived there a long time. I have thought of him so many times. I wish I knew him better. I feel great sorrow for his family and wish for them to have... [ref]
  • "Zhenxiu, dear son, how come you left your parents who loved you so much and left your just-wed wife to go to an unknown world? We miss you so. We really don't want to let you go," Mao's father, Peijing Mao, read from his notes in Chinese as Yuhua Hu, graduate student in chemical engineering and president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, translated into English for those students, faculty members and staff present who did not understand Chinese. "We know you are an ordinary person, but you achieved extraordinary success in your short life," said Mao's father, touching on his son's generosity and dedication to his family. Mao had saved money from his MIT stipend to buy his father a digital camera and had plans to help pay for the education of his niece and nephew. [ref]
  • "He was a wonderful and talented student," said Professor Michael Sipser, head of the Department of Mathematics where Mao had been studying since last fall after earning his B.A. and M.S. from Yale University. Sipser said that all the students in the department are exceptional and described Mao as "the best of the best."[ref]
  • Huadong Pang G, a friend who took classes with Mao, said he was an "excellent guy" who generously donated money to poor elementary and high school students in China even though he did not have much money. Mao was incredibly smart, Pang said. He had high expectations for himself and would read books for ten hours at a time, barely eating or sleeping. [ref]
  • Zhou Zhang G and Fangyun Yang G, who shared an office with Mao, described him as a cheerful, hardworking, friendly, and easygoing person who liked table tennis. [ref]
  • Although he did not necessarily take the first initiative to meet new people, Mao was a lively, kind, and good friend who was easy to work with, said Xuhua He G, a friend. [ref]
  • Mao was ambitious and more advanced than most first-year graduate students, making excellent progress toward a thesis although he was only in his second semester at MIT, said Mathematics Professor Pavel I. Etingof. "He was a wonderful student, academically very successful." [ref]
• 2005-Jul-10 Shin-Kyu Yang Phd 99, Research Associate
  • committed suicide [ref]
  • Yang was a "rigorous researcher" who brought "a really deep skill with mathematics" to his work, said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for E-Business and professor at MIT. Brynjolfsson said Yang was a very funny, outgoing guy when he was a student at MIT. Yang's thesis on how organizations benefit from information technology investment might be one of the best master's theses ever written, Brynjolfsson said.[ref]
  • In 1994, he submitted what may be the best Master's thesis every written at the MIT Sloan School. I hold it here in my hand. It's just 24 pages, yet it was certainly most profound and original master's thesis I've ever read. And it concluded just the opposite of what the Dean and the Nobel Prize winner said about I.T. [ref]
  • One of my favorite memories of Shinkyu is listening to his stories and laughing with him at a dinner party at my house. He had a great sense of humor. He could also be passionate about social justice. I remember learning from him as explained the latest example of technology's impact on society: flash mobs in Seoul, Korea, brought together via cellphones to take political action. Shinkyu was a man who could be very funny, but never, in all my years, said anything disparaging or hurtful to anyone. He was, as one of my colleagues recently put it, a "real gentleman". Shinkyu had many friends and a loving family. (Erik Brynjolfsson) [ref]
  • Shinkyu was lucky to have a true friend like Heekyung, who helped him so many times with his illness. I think it's fair to say, that she saved his life more than once, and for that we are all grateful. [ref]
  • I also fondly remember Shinkyu's humility. I once noticed that Shinkyu had a table tennis paddle in his desk drawer, and I asked if he played much, noting that I played a lot growing up, and would love to play him sometime. He said that would be great and that he had played "some" growing up. It was only after much more pressing on my part, and several attempts on Shinkyu's part to help me save face, that Shinkyu revealed that he "pretty good," "played a lot," and finally that he was a college table tennis champion in Korea. While I never renewed my request play Shinkyu in table tennis, our friendship continued to grow and I will deeply miss my good friend and valued colleague Shinkyu Yang. [ref]
  • One of the things I admired most about Shinkyu was his unshakeable academic integrity "he would check and re-check his data and his equations to make sure everything was accurate. And, as I will discuss in more detail in moment, he had real intellectual courage" he was not afraid to challenge the reigning paradigms of thought. In fact, Shinkyu is also one of those rare people who achieved a measure of immortality through the power of his path-breaking ideas. [ref]
  • I first met Shinkyu when he came to MIT as a master's student. We, the MIT faculty, realized that this was no ordinary MIT Sloan MBA. This was a man who would strengthen the foundation of the university and enhance its reputation with the clout of his intellect. He was a student who loved to learn, yes, but he would also add in fundamental ways to the stock of knowledge from which we all draw. [ref]
  • Even the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, who might be the most visible economist in the world, cited Shinkyu's work in his testimony to Congress and once told me personally how much he liked the work. [ref]
  • Outside the Stern school, his wry humor and funny stories and anecdotes always made it great fun sharing a meal or a drink with him. [ref]
• 2004-May-07 Bhuwan Singh G
  • Singh's body was found in a storage room near his lab and office in Building 13 said Seth Horowitz, press officer for the Middlesex District Attorney's office. He died from asphyxiation, Horowitz said.[ref]
  • The Boston Herald reported that Singh suffocated himself with a yard-waste trash bag. [ref]
  • Chandra Singh, Bhuwan's father, said at the memorial service yesterday that Bhuwan admired Mother Theresa the most, even more than Albert Einstein. [ref]
  • However, both Bhuwan and his younger brother Barun Singh G, current Graduate Student Council president, excelled in academics. Bhuwan enrolled in Auburn University after finishing 10th grade and entered the PhD program at MIT at age 21, according to the biography given at his memorial. Barun followed a similar path. [ref]
  • "I never imagined that there would be a day I would doubt that I didn't understand something very basic" about my son, Bhuwan's father said at the memorial service. It was not clear that Bhuwan wanted "to continue to be the best at something that didn't give him happiness," he said, referring to academics. [ref]
  • Each person who spoke at the memorial service stressed the incredible generosity and support that Bhuwan gave to everyone he met. [ref]
  • He was involved with both the GSC and the dormitory government at Ashdown, where he lived. Housemaster Terry P. Orlando said that Bhuwan was fundamental to the happiness and sense of community of the dormitory.[ref]
  • Bhuwan would do anything for anybody else, to make their lives better, no matter what the sacrifice to himself, Barun said at the memorial. [ref]
  • He was probably a better brother than I could ever have asked for, and you would want everyone remembering him being happy... cheering people up as he always did, Barun said. [ref]
  • "If kindness were a religion, he spread it with unshakeable conviction. If happiness were a faith, he shared it openly. And if joy were a truth, he proclaimed it to all the world, for in the purest sense, Bhuwan was the incarnation of giving," said Singh's friend Eric Caulfield, like Singh a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science. [ref]
  • "He was the most caring person I've ever known," said Professor Terry Orlando, Singh's research advisor and housemaster at Ashdown House, where Singh lived. "If there was a student I was concerned about in the house, all I had to do was ask Bhuwan. He would already know the situation, and he would advise me about what to do." [ref]
  • Orlando also remembered how "every Valentine's Day, roses magically appeared for every woman in Ashdown." He knew Singh was responsible and often asked him to give him the receipts for the flowers. "He always said, 'Oh, okay, I will,' but he never did. It was just something he wanted to do." [ref]
  • Singh's girlfriend, Angela Chow, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, recalled that on one of their first dates, "a homeless woman approached him and he gave her all the money in his wallet. We had to go back home because he didn't have any money left." When she asked him whether he was concerned about how she'd use the money, he told her, "It doesn't matter. Even if it made her happy for one night, it was worth it." [ref]
  • 8/11/95
    Brothers Barun and Bhuwan Singh of Montgomery will be among the hundreds of new Auburn University freshman arriving on campus this fall, but they'll stand out from the masses. Twelve-year-old Barun and 15-year-old Bhuwan will make history by becoming the youngest full-time students ever admitted under Auburn's early admissions policy. The Singh brothers' history-making enrollment started last June, says their mother, Dr. Madhuri Singh, a physician at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tuskegee. "The boys were getting bored in school, so we began looking for programs that would keep them motivated." she said, noting that academic talent is a family trait. "Their father has a Ph.D in chemical engineering," she said. "He finished college at the top of his class and completed high school at age 14," said Mrs. Singh. "We also have a daughter who is a sophomore at Vanderbilt University on full academic scholarship who was valedictorian of her senior class." [ref]
  • Barun Singh has witnessed all the hubbub surrounding an academic whiz kid who graduates with multiple degrees at a young age. It was just last fall that his older brother, Bhuwan Singh, was at the center of attention, graduating from Auburn University at 18 with degrees in three different disciplines and a perfect grade-point average. [ref]
  • On Friday (June11), Barun -- just 16 years old -- will become Auburn's youngest known graduate ever when he receives degrees in electrical engineering and economics. [ref]
  • "I guess we've just always been taught to do our best at whatever we try to do," Singh says of his family's achievements (his father, Chandra, is a chemical engineer; his mother, Madhuri, is a medical doctor; his sister is pursuing a Ph.D. at Northwestern; and Bhuwan is now pursuing a post-graduate degree at the University of Illinois- Chicago Circle.) "Like school is the most important thing for me right now, so it comes first. "Of course, we don't forget about other things, either. It's not like I'm going to study 24 hours a day, but if that's the most important thing, then you treat it as the most important thing." [ref]
  • Bhuwan, you once told me we were soul mates and that meant forever. You also told me because we can't be together in this life we will go our separate ways to live a happy life. Then eventually we will meet again in the after life, when we are both cats. That is when we will be together as eternal lovers. I like to think you made it as a cat before me and one day I'll be there by your side. So wait for me, ok? I miss you. I miss your warm hugs, I miss your sweet kisses and most of all, I miss the feeling of completeness whenever I was with you. I would do anything just to have you hold me one last time and hear you whisper, "I love you," because I really need it now. You will always be a part of me. Goodbye for now. [ref]
• 2004-Feb Daniel S. Mun '05
  • A male body recovered from the Charles River this Saturday has been tentatively identified as Daniel S. Mun '05, a Chi Phi fraternity member who was last seen on Dec. 5. The identification is based on Mun's MIT ID card, which was found in the body's pocket, said President of the Chi Phi House Corporation James Bueche '62. In addition, MIT News Director Arthur L. Jones said that from what the police have said, the general description is that the height and the size [of the body] is consistent with Mun's height and size. [ref]
  • By approximately 5 p.m., the Boston emergency dive team had recovered the body, which was clothed and wearing inline skates, from the river, Moskaitis said. He said that the body appeared to have been underwater for some time. Dexter W. Ang '05, Mun's former roommate, said that Mun did own a pair of inline skates. [ref]
  • The Boston Herald reported in December that Mun's father, Kyung Mun of Kirksville, Missouri, said based on the note he left in his computer, he seemed to be depressed, and said goodbye. I believe that there was something in his computer, said John DiFava, director of Security and Campus Police Services, indicating that he was sad. Ang said that Mun was in his normal demeanor in the days before he went missing. He said he was sure Mun was not suffering from too much stress and did not have any negative feelings towards MIT. [ref]
  • Dan would come to study breaks and get people involved, said Inhan Kang '05, a fellow member of the KSA. "He'd make people feel welcome." Kang said that Mun was very athletic and "loved sports," and often played tennis and attended basketball games. [ref]
  • He was a great tennis player, said John V. Guttag, head of the department of electrical engineering and computer science and the faculty advisor for Chi Phi. I liked him a lot, Guttag said. One of the things I really liked is that he was just full of energy. He had enormous energy and it rubbed off on you when you were with him. It was just hard to be with him and not be having fun. "He was greatly liked in the house, not only liked but admired as well. He was both liked and admired." [ref]
  • Chi Phi member Jeffrey J. Hsu '05 said that Mun would often volunteer to take out the trash from everyone's room just so he would be able to stop by and visit them. While Dong was a big guy, he also had a big tender heart, Hsu said. [ref]
  • "He was such a friendly person," Kang said. "He always had a smile on his face."[ref]
  • "As Daniel would say, 'just chillin" and hangin' out are the memories I will treasure," said Chi Phi President Lowery D. Duvall '05. [ref]
  • Authorities yesterday informed MIT officials that a body found in the Charles River near campus on Saturday had been positively identified as that of the 20-year old biology major. Known as "Dong" to his friends, Mun was reported missing in early December. [ref]
  • "He was full of love for all the world ... and his friends." With those words, Chi Phi member Dexter Ang began an evening of remembrances for his roommate Daniel "Dong" Mun at an often emotional memorial held Wednesday night (March 3) in the MIT Chapel. [ref]
  • Frequent laughter and heavy sobs hung in the chapel air as Mun was described as fun-loving, thoughtful, determined and "an amazing" companion. The stocky Mun was jovial and "always willing to do something for a laugh," said Lowery Duvall, a junior in aeronautics and astronuatics and chapter leader of Chi Phi. [ref]
  • Friend Jeffrey Hsu, said "he was a big guy with a big tender heart. His favorite movie was not some macho movie but 'Notting Hill,' which he'd watch twice in a row." [ref]
• 2003-Apr-08 Jaemin Rhee PhD '01
  • appears to be a suicide [ref]
  • David D. Clark SM '02, a friend of Rhee and a member of the Ptolemy Players, the chamber music group that she founded, said that Rhee had written a brief note before her death. Clark said that the note contained her parents' phone number and a request, "don't tell anybody else."
  • Shayan Mukherjee PhD '01, a postdoctoral fellow in Course IX and a friend of Rhee's, said that she died from an overdose of Valium.[ref]
  • Her suicide "was a complete surprise," said Anand D. Sarwate '02, because right now "didn't seem like a particularly bad time," he said. [ref, ref]
  • Sarwate also Rhee's friend and publicity chair for Ptolemy, confirmed that Rhee had left a "a very matter of fact note." Sarwate said that in the past Rhee had suffered from periods of depression and had been hospitalized for panic attacks. He added that Rhee had undergone therapy and was careful to follow treatment. "She was doing all the right things" to stay healthy, he said. Sarwate said a possible factor might be that she was "kind of stressed out" because she was participating in an upcoming research conference. He also said that she had not yet decided what she would do in the fall as her fellowship would have ended this year. [ref]
  • Rhee's passion outside of her research was performing and enjoying music, and one of her greatest gifts to MIT was founding the Ptolemy Players. Consisting of current and past students, Ptolemy fills a gap in the opportunities for performance and enjoyment of music at MIT. Ptolemy is "creally an opportunity for musicians to get together over the off season" and play, said Peter Jung '01, a cellist in Ptolemy. Rhee was in charge of organizing each concert and would choose the theme of each concert, Sarwate said. She had "a lot of contacts in the Boston music scene," he said, and in one case contacted the composer of a piece they were playing and got him to come listen to the group and give suggestions. It was "eye-opening for me to have that kind of support for" chamber music, he said. "I think her passion for music and her need to share music with the community was really something special." [ref]
  • Ole M. Nielsen G, who was a member of the Ptolemy players, a chamber music ensemble founded by Rhee in 1998, said that Rhee was an "extremely bright person" who was "very gifted ... [in] music and research." Rhee was "extremely cultured ... and read an enormous amount of literature." For the first performance the group made under their new name, Rhee printed only the hieroglyphs for the name Ptolemy. "She was a good friend," Nielsen said. [ref]
  • She had an "incredibly dry, cynical sense of humor," Mukherjee said, and she was "very much herself and never tried to fake being anyone else." [ref]
• 2001-Apr-29 Julia Carpenter
  • The Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner has determined the death on April 30 of MIT student Julia M. Carpenter was a suicide, caused by acute cyanide poisoning. [ref]
  • "Julie was definitely very outgoing and friendly, happy talking to people," said Matthew S. Cain '02, president of Random Hall. "Her death took us all completely by surprise." [ref]
  • Carpenter was a member of Alpha Chi Sigma (AXE), a professional chemistry fraternity. Last year, she rowed for the women's crew team. "She was very active and enthusiastic in our club," said AXE Treasurer Dan Lowrey '02. "We will miss her a lot." [ref]
  • Random Hall Housemaster Nina Davis-Millis said Carpenter had gone out for dim-sum on Sunday and attended a birthday party on the Random Hall roofdeck that evening. "We were just stunned [by the news of Carpenter's death]," Davis-Millis said. "She was making plans for the summer. ... She was happy and filled with life." [ref]
  • "She always had something to say that would brighten up someone's day," said Jenny Lee '02, another member of AXE. [ref]
  • A graduate of Stratford High School in Houston, Texas, Carpenter was an accomplished student and a talented musician who entertained nursing home residents with violin performances when she was in middle school. [ref]
  • That weekend she goes to a barbeque at the Connecticut home of her friend Kristin Josephson and chats about returning to visit the Josephsons in June. Carpenter "seemed happy and did not give us any sign that she had planned on taking her life," Josephson's mother, Dr. Lynn Josephson, later told The Chronicle of Higher Education. [ref]
  • After returning to MIT, Carpenter goes to a birthday party and eats chocolate-chip cookies on the Random Hall roof deck before returning to her room, where she ingests the cyanide. [ref]
  • Charvak P. Karpe G allegedly persists in pursuing a romantic relationship with Julia M. Carpenter '03 despite the fact that Carpenter has a boyfriend. Karpe's persistent attentions allegedly turn into threats and intrusions on Carpenter's privacy. [ref]
  • Karpe allegedly became obsessed with Carpenter, and, according to the lawsuit filing, made vague references to a plot against her and her boyfriend, camped out and slept on a couch in the lounge outside her room, monitored her instant message conversations, and stole a video of Carpenter having sex with her boyfriend, which he allegedly showed to other students. [ref]
  • It is claimed in the lawsuit that the student that was allegedly stalking her was waiting around outside her room, had broken into her computer, and had even downloaded and distributed footage of her being intimate with her boyfriend. [ref]
  • Carpenter filed complaint against fellow dormitory resident in January, saying he was obsessed with her and was sleeping outside her door and searching through her computer files [ref]
  • Carpenter had a drinking problem, students say, and one student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described a conversation with Carpenter in March or April 2001 while she was under the influence of ecstasy. She said she had taken the ecstasy to get out of a bad mood, the student said. [ref]
  • "Immediately after Julie's death, your son Zev told Dean Randolph that he had known a few days before she died that she had bought cyanide," Vest wrote in a June 2001 letter to Kenneth E. Arnold, the father of Zev Arnold, Carpenter's boyfriend, according to a copy of the correspondence Mr. Arnold provided The Tech in 2001. "When Dean Randolph asked him why he had not warned anyone at MIT that she had done so, Zev said he thought she would not actually use the cyanide to commit suicide." [ref]
  • The previous weekend, her daughter, Kristen, had brought a troubled friend, Julie Carpenter, to the Josephsons' vacation home in Connecticut. Before leaving, Ms. Carpenter, a 20-year-old sophomore from Houston, had told her boyfriend, who attended another college, that she "just might check into a hotel and slit her wrists." [ref]
  • "For her, history classes were like a fun hobby," says Natalia Toro, her friend and roommate. "She took the same interest in them as other people would take in things like sports." She played the violin to relax, and she had a long list of classic books, like Les Miserables, that she thought everyone should read. In her room hung a poster of Rudyard Kipling's "If," a poem about self-reliance in the face of adversity, and the maturity that results if "you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you." Back home, in Houston, Ms. Carpenter was an avid horseback rider; she owned a horse named "Happy." To friends, she seemed upbeat and outgoing but very opinionated. "She was always heinously outnumbered in any debate," says a friend, Matthew Cain, now a senior. "She had her own way of seeing the world, and it was generally consistent, but it was different from anyone else." [ref]
  • Ms. Carpenter also clearly had emotional problems. She did not drink much -- "about five times a semester," a friend says -- but when she did, she often became so upset that her friends were worried by her extreme sadness. Her sudden and drastic mood swings scared them enough to alert the housemaster in Random Hall at least once. When Ms. Carpenter got upset, Ms. Toro remembers, "it wasn't like a normal person getting upset -- it seemed to be more than that." [ref]
  • Ms. Carpenter's boyfriend, Zev Arnold, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, also recalls her recurring comments about taking her own life, though he declines to elaborate on what may have prompted those feelings. "She had some really rough experiences in her life that she wasn't dealing with well, but she was very good at appearing happy to everybody else. Pretty much since I met Julie, she had been suicidal. ... It was a running issue for her, and the most frustrating thing about it was that I had almost gotten her past the suicidal phase. She had actually told me she wanted to live. And then the whole Charvak thing happened." [ref]
  • In his eulogy, Mr. Arnold noted that she was "always worried about who was upset or feeling excluded and what she could do to make them happy." Friends say it was that quality that led her to befriend Mr. Karpe, a fellow resident of Random Hall, who seemed awkward socially. He swiftly misinterpreted that friendliness, however. By October, he had professed his love for her, though he knew she had had a serious boyfriend for four years. But that didn't stop Mr. Karpe from pursuing her. As Ms. Carpenter became more assertive about asking him to leave her alone, his behavior became more invasive and strange. Later, she told an administrative judiciary panel: "Within a week all he did was shadow me, and he became obsessive. He told me often how much he loved me and wanted me ... He begged me to sleep with him."[ref]
  • Mr. Karpe could stay in Random Hall until the administration ruled on his case, but the committee forbade him to have any unsupervised contact with Ms. Carpenter. According to Dr. Josephson's e-mail message and the recollection of friends, the decision to let him stay was what prompted Ms. Carpenter to tell her boyfriend that she wanted to commit suicide. Her impression, she wrote in the e-mail, was that Ms. Carpenter felt that "she had no other recourse but to move out of Random to escape, or escape through death." About an hour after replying to Dr. Josephson, Dean Randolph met with Ms. Carpenter. Though the dean won't say what happened at the meeting, friends and administrators familiar with the case say that he referred her for counseling and told her that Mr. Karpe would be moved to another dormitory until an administrative review panel had completed its hearing. For reasons that he declines to explain, though, he referred Ms. Carpenter to counseling for a drinking problem, but did not inform the counselor of the harassment case or her suicide threat. [ref]
  • Ms. Carpenter's friends say the meeting with Dean Randolph left Ms. Carpenter with the impression that administrators were blaming her for the harassment she was enduring. [ref]
• 2001-Feb Seth L. Karon '01
  • died in his hometown of Plymouth, Minnesota, last Wednesday in a suicide. He was 21 years old. [ref]
  • Karon, who had a longstanding battle with depression, had been on a formal leave of absence from the Institute since August, said Dean of Students Robert M. Randolph. He majored in Chemistry and was a member of Tau Epsilon Phi. In addition, he was a gifted photographer and writer. [ref, ref]
  • "It is as if simply living is beginning to hurt. Our 'need' for efficiency and mainstream societal acceptance is leaving me empty." [ref]
  • "I want to take a break from everything, so I don't end up twenty pounds overweight, a child of an alcoholic, and a co-dependent living in a van down by the river. I want to feel something." [ref]
  • "The demands of society leave us with no time for emotions at all... How about studying your ass off just so you can go to a college where you are only a number?" [ref]
  • "Is working on your chemistry lab until two-thirty in the morning really worth it? Does it make life enjoyable? Twenty years from now, will you look back on your life and say: 'Gee, my life has meaning because a certain Mr. W. gave me an "A" on my essay?' It is almost as if we must win at everything, even though we don't like the game, because finishing fourth isn't acceptable. Why not?" [ref]
  • "The major problem in our society is our need to constantly do, make, or build something. We are a materialistic society. What is wrong with sitting on our asses all day talking to each other? Can't we just throw a hackey-sack around while drinking sixty-four degree beer for sixteen hours straight?" [ref]
• 2000 Elizabeth H. Shin '02
  • The day before Elizabeth Shin set herself on fire in her dormitory room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her parents and little sister drove up from suburban New Jersey for a quick visit. The Shins did not know that Elizabeth had been threatening suicide or indeed that the very night before she tried and failed to summon the nerve to stick a knife into her chest... And so they saw what they usually saw, or perhaps what they wanted to see: their giggly, harried 19-year-old caught up in her busy, overachieving life. It was a last-minute trip, a Sunday jaunt with a trunk load of presents. After unloading on Massachusetts Avenue in front of Random Hall, the Shins lugged cases of spring water and tomato juice, boxes of cereal and lo mein, up to their daughter's room. For a finale, they delivered and hooked up a new television and VCR. Elizabeth seemed like herself; she was palling around with a dorm mate whom she teasingly introduced as her male twin. Her eyes did look tired and puffy, but her parents knew that she had a lot going on, what with her studies, her clarinet performances, her fencing meets. That was M.I.T., they thought, and that was Elizabeth, always pushing herself. During an early supper with her family at a Chinese restaurant, Elizabeth hunched over sheet music, preparing for a rehearsal later that evening of her chamber music quartet. She discussed getting passport photos taken for a summer trip to Korea, her parents' homeland. She invited her little sister, Christie, to spend a weekend with her. And then she more or less ran off, and her father, as usual, shouted after her, "If you need us, we're only a phone call away." The Shins' phone call came the next night, but not from Elizabeth. "There's been a fire," an M.I.T. official began. [ref]
  • The Shins make no bones of the fact that they always told their children, as Kisuk Shin says, that "education is the most important thing in our lives." And education meant all-around education. [ref]
  • The disc also included entries from Elizabeth's journal, which were found on her computer by the campus police. Who can know whether she anticipated that there would one day be an audience for her reflections? They certainly do not have a ring of finality. But now they are being perused by a bevy of lawyers as a portal into the bedroom where she self-immolated. And they give an idea of Elizabeth's dizzying blend of charming, witty and disturbed thoughts. Sometime on the day before the fire, Elizabeth apparently sequestered herself in her room, lighting four candles to create a soothing mood. "Yoga chick," she began lightheartedly, musing on a workout that had afforded her a respite from her crushing anxieties. "Unfortunately, I can't spend all of my life in a yoga position. Or, maybe I can?" Then, quite suddenly, she shifted into dark verse, directed at a boyfriend who had recently broken up with her. "May I have white roses when I die, my love?/ Will you place them at the head of my grave?" Just as quickly, however, she caught herself. "Uh oh, I am in a morbid mood. I only write death poetry (bad unpoetic stuff at best) when I am morbid." Elizabeth explained that she was trying to shake herself out of a state. "Here I am, typing away aimlessly, hoping to exorcise my demons. Rats. It's turning out to be more like exercising them. Are my demons in better shape than me?" [ref]
  • For my visit, the Shins had displayed photographs of Elizabeth on their piano and also a large vase filled with origami cranes that students brought to the hospital while Elizabeth lay dying. On the coffee table, Kisuk Shin had built a hill of greeting cards. Elizabeth, it seemed, had sent them cards on every holiday short of Groundhog Day. Kisuk Shin was sensitive to the idea that I might get an impression from M.I.T. that Elizabeth didn't get along with her parents. Indeed, Matthew Cain, Elizabeth's friend and dorm mate, had told me point-blank in an Au Bon Pain on campus, "Liz didn't like her parents, plain and simple." As if to refute any such idea, however, Kisuk Shin pushed toward me a Valentine's Day card. Two months before her death, Elizabeth wrote in purple gel: "I just wanted to let you both know that I'll be thinking of you today. I hope that your day is filled with much love and happiness . . . and I'm going to be happy on Feb. 14 because I don't have lab (no lab on Mondays!) and can celebrate by . . . studying some more!!! Yippee! Love, Liz." [ref]
  • "She talks about relationships with her dorm mates," Kisuk Shin said. "She tells me about her good friend, he's gay. My friends, their children don't talk to them about gay. But I don't like to push her, because the time she's with us is for relaxing. She works so hard. I cannot believe this girl." Kisuk Shin continued: "I ask her, 'Are you happy there?' She say, 'Yeah, I'm happy.' And I know Elizabeth. She's brilliant, beautiful, very self-oriented, very trustworthy. She's the kind of girl, when she gets a cold, she goes to the doctor. When she gets knee pain, she goes to the doctor. She take care of herself ever since she's young." [ref]
  • Elizabeth's admission to psychiatrists that she cut her wrists very superficially after she was bumped from valedictorian to salutatorian of West Orange High School. [ref]
  • By the winter of Elizabeth's freshman year at M.I.T., she was starting to panic about academic success. M.I.T. seeks to ease the stress on freshmen by not recording first-year grades; students either pass a course or it is not mentioned on their transcripts. Nonetheless, Elizabeth saw it as a failure when she did not pass physics in her first term. She promised herself she'd redouble her efforts in her second semester, only to find herself battling an incredible fatigue. Then one day in February 1999, she found out she had mononucleosis. That night she took 15 of the Tylenol with codeine tablets that she had been prescribed. Her boyfriend found her disoriented and called the campus police, and Elizabeth was rushed to the hospital and then, as is standard in such cases, she was admitted for evaluation to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont. [ref]
  • "I was really shocked," Kisuk Shin said. "Nina Davis asked me, 'Do you know your daughter try to suicide?' I said to Liz, 'I want to hear from you what happened.' She said: 'Mommy, I'm not stupid. I know how many pills you have to take to kill yourself.' She told me: 'I was so frustrated. There was a test coming. I had to study. I took what I thought was just enough pills to sleep really well and get up fresh."' [ref]
  • In the fall of her sophomore year, Elizabeth returned to her tight-knit dorm, Random Hall, a series of interconnected old row houses. She began the year with intense anxiety that she would not excel academically; her friends told me that she was objectively doing well at M.I.T. in almost every regard, academically, socially, athletically and musically, but was nonetheless overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy. [ref]
  • I asked Kisuk Shin if she thought her daughter was a perfectionist, and she said yes. Before Elizabeth's death, however, she didn't think that was a bad thing. She told me about a performance of the New Jersey Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in which Elizabeth gave a clarinet solo. Afterward, Elizabeth was practically in tears. ''She said this squeak sound came out of her clarinet,'' Kisuk said. ''We said we didn't notice any squeak sound. She insisted. We said, 'If you did make a squeak sound, it's done, you have to go forward.''' [ref]
  • Her sophomore fall, after a breakup with a boyfriend, Elizabeth voluntarily made her first visit of the year to the campus mental health center. A therapist there reported that Elizabeth told her that she had "passive thoughts" about death -- 10 percent of college students do, according to a C.D.C. study -- but did not have any plan to kill herself. Elizabeth did, however, report that she was cutting herself, superficially. The act of cutting had apparently become a habit. She described the self-mutilation in counseling sessions as a way of forcing herself to feel something when she otherwise felt hollow or to distract herself from emotional pain. In the journal entries, she described it more graphically: "My blood spills out. No, it seeps out. It fascinates me to watch the little beads forming, coming to the surface, emerging until a thin red line forms and then wells up, spilling out of the incision, slice, cut, whatever. A moment of absolute interest and fascination, peace and beauty." [ref]
  • The next month, Elizabeth sent an e-mail message to a biology instructor, in which she said she was despondent over getting a low score on a test. She confessed that she had purchased a bottle of "sleeping pills" but that she fell asleep before taking any. Her boyfriend then walked in and saw her "little pile of blue pills," and she was caught, she wrote. She signed off: "Sigh. I let myself down too much." [ref]
  • Despite the anxieties roiling Elizabeth, she did not hide in her dorm room and still came across as gregarious. In fact, her room was a magnet for her dorm mates because she had affixed to the door a protective torso from fencing; students would take turns putting their professors' names in the name tag and then jabbing it with one of Elizabeth's old épées. [ref]
  • By mid-March, though, after another break-up with a boyfriend, Elizabeth's behavior grew more worrisome. After midnight one night, her friends woke up their dorm master to alert her that Elizabeth was very upset and had a knife. [ref]
  • A week later, a boyfriend accompanied her back to the mental health service; her friends were taking turns staying up late at night with her. They were all concerned, if not scared, and Elizabeth was upset about upsetting them. Often she would switch gears from hysterical to subdued by the time they brought her situation to an adult's attention. [ref]
  • On Sunday, April 9, Elizabeth's parents and little sister paid her that quick visit. Later that same night, she started melting down. She asked a friend to erase her computer files, told him that she was preparing to kill herself with a cocktail of alcohol and Tylenol, then fell asleep. [ref]
  • The campus police officers kicked in Elizabeth's door, found a fireball in the middle of the room and a young woman flailing about engulfed in flames. They blasted her and the room with fire extinguishers. The smoke was thick. One officer managed to fan it aside and find Elizabeth's foot. He dragged her into the lobby. The police poured gallons of water from the dorm bathroom on her. They performed CPR, put her on oxygen, placed her on a stretcher and sent her to Mass General. The Shins rushed to Boston. A doctor told them that Elizabeth had suffered third-degree burns on 65 percent of her body. Several days later, Elizabeth died, and the medical examiner ruled Elizabeth's death a suicide. [ref]
  • At their Presbyterian church, the Shins know, the other Korean families pray for them. But no one pries. "They don't dare ask questions because this is a mental issue," Cho Shin said. Kisuk interrupted him to say that there was nothing shameful about mental issues. "It's not shameful," Cho Shin continued, "but people think if we were the perfect family, why would someone suffer mentally?" [ref]
  • The Shins' lawyer stated that the results of a toxicology test indicated that Elizabeth had overdosed on a nonprescription medication prior to the fire that could have prevented her from responding appropriately to its outbreak. [ref]
• 1999-Feb-6 Michael P. Manley '02
  • Michael P. Manley '02 died Saturday afternoon after falling from the 14th floor of MacGregor House in an apparent suicide. [ref]
  • Manley, 17, a resident of MacGregor G-entry, was a student in the Experimental Study Group his first semester at the Institute. He had expressed interest to friends in majoring both in writing and in urban studies and planning. Manley also wrote for Counterpoint, a joint MIT-Wellesley student publication and had recently started working on a UROP in regional transportation planning. He was from Tempe, Arizona. [ref]
  • "Michael was a warm, funny and very bright young man who would have excelled at MIT. He was also a very talented writer and storyteller. He'd often reduce my freshman seminar group to uncontrolled laughter through tales of his day-to-day experiences here. We all enjoyed the pleasure of his company, and are very shocked and saddened by his death," said Patricia J. Culligan, associate professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who taught the freshman advisory seminar that Manley took last semester. [ref]
  • Manley was openly gay and had participated in activities sponsored by the Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgendered, and Friends at MIT his first week at MIT as well as a few times during the year, according to Terrance D. Harmon '99, general coordinator of GAMIT. According one of Manley's friends, residents of G-entry were accepting of his homosexuality. [ref]
  • "Michael was such a bright star. It is just unfortunate he didn't realize how much he had going for him," said Jonathan D. Kennell '02, who knew Manley through ESG. [ref]
  • "He was very caring, very sensitive in that it mattered to him what people thought," said Christine L. Tsien G, G-entry floor tutor. "I thought he had a really nice smile and that is what I'd like to remember," Tsien said. [ref]
  • "Michael was funny and sensitive. He was very likable. He liked to laugh so much. He was so determined to succeed and he was so brilliant. He loved to write, and he was so good at it. He always wanted to help people and planned on joining the Peace Corps. He was a loving person and I will remember Michael for the rest of my life," said a friend of Manley who is a resident of G-entry. [ref]
  • When examining the record of suicide on campus a number of interesting patterns emerge: only one student, Michael P. Manley ’02, committed suicide in his first year at MIT since at least 1964 [ref]
• 1999 Richard A. Guy Jr. '99
  • Guy died in 1999 of asphyxiation by nitrous oxide inhalation in the East Campus dormitory. [ref]
  • About 45 MIT students accompanied by Lutheran Chaplain Constance Parvey and Professor Jed Z. Buchwald, the East Campus house-master, attended the funeral of Richard A. Guy II in Garden City, NY on September 4. [ref]
  • a physics major [ref]
  • 22 year-old [ref]
  • a junior from Mission Viejo, Cal. [ref]
  • University officials believe that Mr. Guy was alone when he died. However, they said, he might have obtained the gas from a "community canister," which they suspect was also used by other students in the dormitory. [ref]
  • Howard Yuh, a graduate resident tutor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found Guy's body amid a large stash of illegal drugs, including marijuana, mushrooms and amphetamines. [ref]
  • President Charles M. Vest spoke specifically about the death of Mr. Guy and generally about the toll taken by drugs on college campuses at a news conference at MIT on September 3. "I met Richard Guy when he was a freshman. He was not only bright, but was a talented baseball pitcher. He struck me at that time as a very personable young man. We crossed paths a couple of other times in subsequent years, and I once received a thoughtful and friendly note from him. He had recently dropped out of school for a time to be with his father, who was battling a terrible cancer back home in California. "My brief earlier acquaintance with him makes this tragedy painfully real. And it is a grim reminder of so many other needless deaths throughout the country, every year, of young people who foolishly involve themselves with drugs," he said. President Vest spent about an hour with Mr. Guy's parents, Richard and Janet Guy, on September 2 at MIT. Their meeting was private and confidential, President Vest told reporters. [ref]
• 1998-Mar-13 Philip C. Gale '98
  • Philip C. Gale '98 died when he fell from a classroom window on the fifteenth floor of Building 54. [ref]
  • "Alone in a 15th-floor classroom, MIT sophomore Philip C. Gale drew a physics formula on a blackboard showing what happens when a body falls from a great height. Then he slammed a chair through the classroom window and jumped more than 200 feet to his death" [ref]
  • Many students called to report the incident to the police, Glavin said. "By the end, there were a couple of dozen people around," said Brian T. Sniffen '00, who witnessed the fall from his room in East Campus. [ref]
  • In his off-campus Central Square apartment, a friend said, he left a brief note saying, in essence: "Don't grieve." Nor did Gale leave clues to his state of mind on a cassette tape recorder left running in the classroom he jumped from - a newly bought digital recorder with a $1,000-plus price tag still attached, a police source said. "You can hear him walking around the room. You can hear the window being smashed, but no voice," said the source. The blackboard diagram Gale drew was pure mathematics, "a mass-velocity formulation explaining what happens when a mass goes out a window," Dean Randolph said. While Gale's suicide was unexpected, his method wasn't. "It was typical Phil. It's so like him to have planned a show," said an ex-girlfriend, Wellesley College student Christine Hrul, 22. "He was so careful with things in his life, so methodical," she said. [ref]
  • For months, Gale had been despondent, and recently had talked of suicide, friends said. "He mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. He had considered it and dismissed it," his fraternity brother Eruc Hu told the Crimson newspaper at Harvard University. "He was just bored with life and I guess just depressed that he was destined to be bored for the rest of his life," Hu said. [ref]
  • According to Gale's friends, depression - or what he called "boredom" or a "void" - had long been masked by his irreverent sense of humor. The tall, skinny overachiever with close-cropped, bright red hair began to see his computer and music classwork as "inane." He spent hours banging on a drum set and playing computer games. Gale was still coming to terms with the sudden death of his father two years ago - at age 47 - of a heart attack, said Lauren McLeod, 22, a college friend who is now a reporter for the Concord Journal. "He was having a really hard time dealing with it, and with how his family reacted to it. He had drifted apart from his family since his father's death," McLeod said. [ref]
  • A student newspaper, The Thistle, published an obituary describing the distress Philip Gale may have been facing alone. "He found himself caught between two worlds and terribly alone in the center," the obituary said. [ref]
  • Gale, a music major and member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, returned to MIT in 1996 to complete his studies after taking a leave of absence from the Institute. Originally from Charlotte N.C., Gale first came to MIT four years ago at the age of 15, but left to serve as Director of Research and Development for Earthlink Network, an internet service provider, from March 1995 until March 1996. Gale lived off-campus in an apartment in Central Square after his return to the Institute. [ref]
  • Mr. Gale was 15 when he enrolled at MIT in 1994 after graduating from the Delphian Academy in Oregon, intending to major in physics. He left the next year to become director of research and development for the Earthlink Network, an Internet service provider. [ref]
  • Fluent in 20 computer programming languages, he took a break from MIT, and before his 17th birthday earned stock options worth perhaps $1 million - and a $70,000 annual salary - writing software at the Los Angeles-based Internet company EarthLink Network Inc. [ref]
  • Upon returning to MIT as a music major, Mr. Gale performed with the MIT Concert Choir and the Gamelan Galek Tika, a percussion group which plays traditional Balinese music. [ref]
  • Gale had been preparing to take an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program position in the Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group at the Media Lab, said Professor of Music and Media Tod E. Machover, Gale's UROP adviser. Gale had taken Machover's course in Musical Aesthetics and Media Technology (MAS.825J) during the fall term. He designed graphical music game designed for children that "was absolutely unique and remarkable" as his final project in the course, Machover said. Machover, recognizing the quality of Gale's final project, had invited Gale to continue work on the project as a UROPstudent after the class was over. "As seemed typical of Phil, he went his own way, and after three months of not hearing from him, he got back to me just last week with another - completely different - idea for a UROP project. Phil proposed to develop a way of analyzing extremely diverse sounds - everything from crowd noises to nature sounds to machine clanging, specifically from the Central Square area - so that they could be organized and associated according to rhythmic loudness, and coloristic similarities," Machover said. "Phil was going to start work on the project right away, and I have no doubt that it would have yielded spectacular and unexpected results." [ref]
  • Gale also impressed coworkers at Earthlink. "He was without a doubt the most intelligent guy I ever met. He was brilliant in nearly every respect," said Brian Murphy, who worked in the same division as Gale at Earthlink. "He could have done anything he wanted in life, there just aren't that many people like him," Murphy said. "I was utterly shocked when I heard about the suicide. I would have never considered him to be suicidal." "He was just a really nice guy. I couldn't think of a single bad thing about him if I'd tried," Murphy said. While at Earthlink, Gale designed Total Access, the company's internet registration software, said Kirsten Kappos, vice-president of corporate communications at Earthlink. [ref]
  • Gale wasn't even 17 when he left EarthLink with options to buy at under $10 tens of thousands of shares. Those shares shot up to 53 5/8 by March 13, not long after the Internet company announced a partnership with Sprint Corp. "If he wasn't a millionaire then he was well into it," his former co-worker Brian Ladner said. But Gale, who often dressed in green khaki pants and a "grungy" shirt, didn't care about money except to buy computer equipment and drums, the friend said. Now, months later, an impromptu memorial still marks the spot where Philip Gale fell. On a lightpost, friends arrayed an unopened packet of Camel cigarettes, a stuffed animal, flowers, a candle, a wooden hammer, and a eulogy: "As misunderstood as he seemed in life, so he remains in the afterlife." [ref]
  • Since Gale's death in March, many have questioned whether his suicide at 19 was attributable to his upbringing in Scientology. Gale had left Scientology, but years of Scientology schools, studies, and home-life must have been deeply ingrained. [ref]
  • Gale attended Scientology's "elite" Delphi Academy boarding school in Oregon from age 8 to 14, enrolled at MIT at 15, and took time off at age 17 to work for Earthlink, an Internet company with Scientology links (recently bought by Sprint). [ref]
  • A friend of Gale's said, "Leaving Scientology was a traumatic experience. He was brought up thinking it was the only way." [ref]
  • But friends dispute this claim. Gale did come from a family who had been active members of the Church of Scientology; his mother used to be the national spokesperson for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group affiliated with Scientology. Gale also attended The Delphian School, an educational institution which uses works by Hubbard as the basis of its teaching philosophy. Early speculation about Gale's death was prompted by the fact that March 13 is L. Ron Hubbard day, the birthday of the founder of Scientology. [ref]
  • "There were plenty of other things he was thinking about at the time," Munsey disagreed. "The fact that he chose that day to jump is not necessarily significant; he would have seen the connection with L. Ron Hubbard day, but wouldn't have cared." [ref]
  • In a post to a Usenet newsgroup, Marie Gale suggested that Philip Gale's death might have been because of attacks on the religion he grew up with.Prior to his death, Philip Gale had been interviewed by a reporter with the Boston Herald for a five-part series entitled "Scientology Unmasked." "I had an upbeat conversation; Philip made it clear to me that he wasn't a practicing Scientologist," said Joseph Mallia, the Herald reporter who wrote the series. "I would consider it very straight. I don't really know what to say about that post." [ref]
  • "Phil had given up Scientology by the time I started rooming with him," Hu said. "It wasn't on his mind when he died [because] it was a struggle he already overcame. He had decided against it." Hu said that none of the struggles in Gale's life were related to Scientology. "His struggles at the time of death had more to do with the possibilities of his life," Hu said. Eric Hu '98, a good friend of Gale's and his roommate at Phi Sigma Kappa during their freshman year, said that Gale's suicide was unrelated to Scientology. [ref]
  • "I'm certain that his decision to end his life had little, if anything, to do with Scientology," said Christine C. Hrul, a close friend of Gale's and a student at Wellesley. "I don't believe that anyone close to him had considered the connection seriously... His Scientology background never played a frequent role in our conversations," she said. [ref]
  • Gale's family members also denied any link. "I am a member of the Church of Scientology and have been since well before Philip was born," Marie Gale said. "Several years ago Philip decided that Scientology was not for him - nor was any other religion. I honored his decision and he honored mine and the difference in our choices was never an issue in our relationship," she said. [ref]
  • While I am a Scientologist, I am a mother," said Marie Gale, "and my son, whom I loved and respected and, more than anything, wanted to be able to achieve his goals in life - whatever they were and wherever they took him - is gone." [ref]
• 1997-Sep-29 Scott Krueger '01
  • Scott S. Krueger '01 died last night at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, according to wire reports early this morning. Krueger was found unconscious in his room at Phi Gamma Delta late Friday night, apparently suffering from alcohol poisoning after drinking excessively during a fraternity event. He was in a coma for three days before his death. Kreuger's blood alcohol level was 0.41 percent when he arrived at the hospital Saturday morning. As a result of this incident all fraternity, sorority and independent living group activities involving alcohol have been voluntarily suspended and all dormitory activities will be alcohol-free pending a review of alcohol policies. MIT Campus Police were notified that Krueger was unconscious at approximately 11:56 p.m Friday. Boston Police, Fire Department and EMS officers responded after the Campus Police called 911. Boston police reported finding Krueger "unresponsive [and] unconscious" at approximately 12:12 a.m. in his basement room at Fiji. The police report stated that "several empty alcohol bottles and fresh vomit [were] observed in [the] victim's room." According to Robert M. Randolph, senior dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs, "they (the pledges) had just been told who their big brothers were." In addition, Randolph said, "they were celebrating with alcohol." [ref]
• 1996-Feb-26 Melissa N. Ronge '98
  • Melissa N. Ronge '98 fell to her death from the 14th floor of MacGregor House yesterday, sometime between 4 and 6 a.m. [ref]
  • Ronge's friends remembered her as an outgoing person. "I was impressed by her ability to organize things," said one friend of Ronge. "She did so much with sports at MIT. She was well known and respected on campus. "She was always a week ahead in all her classes," the friend said. "You don't know exactly what to say. You can't bundle up a person's memory in a number of lines." [ref]
  • Ronge was majoring in applied math at MIT. She served as team statistician for the men's and women's soccer and basketball teams, and men's volleyball and lacrosse teams at MIT. She has held numerous positions as a team statistician since high school and described sports statistics as her real love. She served as athletic chair for her living group on campus, played the violin and chess, and liked to read, watch movies and listen to music. [ref]
  • Sophomore Melissa N. Ronge was posthumously named the winner of the Burton R. Anderson Award for the outstanding intercollegiate manager of the year. [ref]
• 1993-Jan Festus M. Moore '94
  • was found dead outside the Boston University School of Law in what BU police called an apparent suicide. Police believe he jumped from the 15th floor of the Law Library. No Note or explanation was found.[ref]
  • Moore, whose friends called him Fes-Mike, was "well known and well liked," said Professor Derek Rowell, housemaster at New House. "We are all dismayed by this personal tragedy. I am amazed about the number of people that he knew. He was very outgoing and will be sorely missed. He was involved in a lot of different activities. He played hockey, managed the volleyball team, and worked at [On-Line Consulting]. A lot of people knew him." [ref]
  • "He was a really great guy," said Marybeth Kossuth '94. "He was the kind of guy that everyone was friends with. We're all still kind of in shock. ... We all knew that he wasn't doing well, and he wasn't happy all of the time. But we had no indication that he was suicidal." [ref]
  • "He was a young man who worked hard here. He had a job to put himself through MIT. The difficulties he had were last year. The things seem to have been worked out in September" 1992, Randolph said." [ref]
  • Moore had received a warning from the Committee on Academic Performance earlier in the week, Randolph said, but he emphasized that there was "no correlation" between the CAP warning and Moore's apparent suicide. He had also failed a class and recently changed majors, from Electrical Science and Engineering (VI-1) to Computer Science and Engineering (VI-3). [ref]
  • Friends expressed disbelief on hearing of Moore's death. New House President Hung-Chou Tai '94 said, "Nobody knew if he wanted to commit suicide. His friends think a strong gust of wind came and he lost his balance. ... Every time I saw him he was quite cheerful. He was never depressed. It all came as a shock." [ref, ref]
  • The News of Moore's death "came as a shock ... because a few years back there was a suicide at MacGregor. Fes-Mike and my other roommate were talking about it, and Fes-Mike said it was kind of stupid. If they were to ask me to pick someone who was least likely to do it, it would have been Fes-Mike," said Mario A. Salinas '94, Moore's freshman roommate. [ref]
  • Mr. Moore was fluent in Spanish and lived in Spanish House. His home address was The Bronx, N.Y. [ref]
  • It was a narrow, difficult to open window. The wind-chill factor was 15 below zero that night. ... He apparently had to climb over some desks and chairs to get to the window. ... I gathered that there was some furniture in the way," MIT Associate Dean for Student Affairs Robert M. Randolph said. [ref]
  • Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Tomas Lozano-Perez '74, Moore's academic adviser, described him as "extremely quiet. ... I registered him for three terms, and I didn't think he has said very much while I saw him. ... He was not particularly outgoing, at least with me. Some students are outgoing, some are not." [ref]
  • "He hadn't registered this term. I have not seen him for a while," Lozano-Perez said. "This is not uncommon. He was not the only student in my group to not come by. The news [of his death] came as a real shock to me." [ref]
• 1991-Jun-20 Douglas P. Rodger '93
  
  • Douglas P. Rodger '93, a 20-year-old electrical engineering major from Harvard, MA, died June 20 from carbon monoxide poisoning while in his garage at home. Rodger was working on his car at the time. [ref]
  • "Doug was extremely personable," said his fraternity brother, Theta Xi Treasurer Matthew S. Warren '93. "He was very easygoing . . . an incredibly good brother and excellent friend." David A. Lippe '93, another of Rodger's fraternity brothers, described Roger as "very selfless." Roger had just begun the 6-A Internship Program this summer. His father, Tod, said his son's academic interests included computers and electronics. Douglas also enjoyed cross-country skiing, biking and running. [ref]
  • On June 20 my wife returned home to find Douglas' dead body, slumped against the door from the garage, apparently trying to escape into the basement of our home. He died from carbon monoxide poisoning. [ref]
• 1991-Jun Edward B. Hontz Jr. '92
  
  • Edward B. Hontz Jr. '92 died on June 4 after falling from the roof of Building 66. [ref]
  • Randolph, who heads Student Assistance Services, said that while he did not have any details about Hontz's condition immediately prior to death, there existed "some indication that was depressed." [ref]
  • A computer-science major, Hontz was described as "really friendly," "very relaxed" and "extremely intelligent" by his fraternity brother, Zeta Beta Tau Vice President Eric A. Lehman '92. He was also interested in mathematics, Lehman added, and enjoyed playing ultimate frisbee in his leisure time. [ref]
  • Hontz had been living in ZBT's Brookline house for the summer, though he had lived in Senior House last spring and planned to move back there in the fall. He spent last fall studying mathematics in Hungary.
  • On the MIT team that ranked in the top 98 in theFifty-First William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition [ref]
• 1990-Oct Younes Borki '92
  • Younes Borki '92, a student in the Department of Mathematics, fell from the 14th-floor (A-Entry) lounge of MacGregor House yesterday at 11:40 am. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Beth-Israel Hospital at around 12:20 pm. Borki left a note, leaving little doubt that his death was a suicide. [ref]
  • Borki, a Moroccan citizen, had many friends in MacGregor. He played several sports avidly, and could sometimes be found in the A-Entry lounge as late as 2 am playing ping pong, said Pavel and Ivka Bystricky, the A-Entry floor tutors. In his role as A-Entry athletic chair, he organized the entry's participation in many intramural sports. [ref]
  • Borki had lived in MacGregor since his freshman year. He was 19 years old. [ref]
  • MacGregor Housemaster Robert S. Kennedy '59 called Borki's death a "contradiction." Borki was "very sound, very outgoing, without being frenetic or compulsive," he said." [ref]
  • "He's been in really good spirits. No one really knows why [he died]," said Patrick M. Ewing II '92, A-Entry chair. Ewing also said that Borki's suicide note had been characterized as "positive." [ref]
• 1990-Oct

  • A letter to the future "leaders" of my school

    I've wanted to write this for a long time but belonging to the class of people I do it has taken me a while. I apologize -- the letter has been badly needed. Some people do not realize it, or maybe they just choose to ignore it, like they do us.

    I am a nobody. I was never given the attributes that a leader possesses. We "nobodies" are the nation's future "silent majority." We are the ones who carry the majority of votes, then sit back to be led.

    Only sometimes, we don't sit back. We timidly raise our hand to volunteer for a committee, if we haven't already given up trying. Usually we are passed over in favor of a "leader" type, who has been tried and found true. If we are picked out of the faceless mass of nobodies sitting in our section, we're supposed to feel privileged . . . and generally we do.

    When we show up at a meeting, the only one of our kind, we find ourselves slightly out of place, and very uncomfortable. Those who try to make us more at ease, more accepted, will forever have our gratitude.

    Now I am a senior. I will probably never have much of an effect on people, but if just one future "leader" remembers this, I'll feel somewhat useful and very gratified.

    Please take a little time to remember us nobodies. It is true that most of us will follow our leaders out of cowardly habit, but we will remember and have a certain amount of affection for those who took the time to treat us as human beings, not just as potential voters, or even admirers. Those who can't even spare a "thank you" when we compliment them on some achievement or even some article of apparel, will be forgotten as soon as possible. And those patronizing airs may bolster your ego, but they don't go very far with a nobody.

    This may, to some, sound bitter or trivial. I mean it to be neither.

    Those "leaders" who laugh or ignore this, well . . . I feel sorry for you. You don't even have sense enough to recognize yourselves. I remain as always . . . anonymous.

    Does that sound like anyone you know? Are there people that you feel may need just a "hello" or a "thank you?" If there are, or if you know of any, you should get to them soon. The author of this letter committed suicide six days after completing it. The letter was his way of asking for help. But anonymous did not receive help. If you think someone needs help, or if you know someone that seems locked in his room all the time, help him. Invite him somewhere. Take him to a movie, ice cream, biking, anything. It is important to let him know that he is not alone.

    MIT students are at an advantage. There are many different people of different cultures brought together here. Do you know the person sitting next to you? People thrive on companionship. I challenge you to find out. Learn who the people on your floor are. Build friendships that you can really enjoy and feel comfortable with. Again, I ask, who is the person sitting next to you? I am not convinced you really know.

    You might say a name, and describe how tall he or she is, and the color of his or her eyes and hair. But none of these qualities are what a person is.

    A person is invisible activities.

    Who then is the person sitting next to you?

    The person sitting next to you is suffering.

    She is working away at problems. She has fears. She wonders how she is doing. Often she does not feel too good about how she is doing; and she finds that she can't respect or like herself. When she feels that way about herself, she has a hard time loving others. When she doesn't feel good about herself and finds it hard to love others, she suffers. . . .

    That person sitting next to you is the greatest miracle and greatest mystery that you will ever meet. The person sitting next to you is sacred.

    [ref]
• 1990-Jul-04 David G. Moore '91
  • report by the Middlesex County District Attorney's office classifies the July 4 death of David G. Moore '91 as a suicide. [ref]
  • fell from a fifth-story balcony in Senior House [ref]
  • Both the district attorney's office and the medical examiner are awaiting a toxicology report, which will indicate if there were any drugs in Moore's body at the time of his death. Samaluk explained that such reports "typically take many weeks." Such a report would prove or disprove reports that Moore died while he was under the influence of LSD. While officials have declined comment on the subject, some individuals have said that he almost certainly took LSD before falling from the balcony. [ref]
  • Several sources said Moore apparently jumped off the balcony while under the influence of LSD. One individual said Moore "had a very bad reaction" to a dose of the drug, and others agreed that he probably jumped to stop the drug's effect. [ref]
  • extremely widespread reports that Moore jumped from the balcony after taking LSD [ref]
  • Moore was known as an exceptionally friendly, bright person who always tried to help others. He was elected house president during his sophomore year, and went on to become president of the Dormitory Council. [ref]
  • Moore's academic advisor, Professor Roger D. Kamm, described him as "the strong, very intelligent, silent type . . . it was very clear that there was a lot going on in his head." Kamm added that Moore "obviously did well in his coursework." [ref]
  • [Professor James T.] Higginbotham [the Senior House housemaster] said that he and his wife "were great admirers of David." "At the time he was chosen president . . . we had just arrived, and we didn't really know him at all. But as soon as we saw him in action, I was very impressed with him as a leader." "He put considerable responsibility on his own shoulders for being a spokesman for the house," Higginbotham added. [ref]
  • "Everyone in the dorm knew him," said Amie J. F. B. Strong '92. [ref]
  • "You can think of a couple of people [who are] reckless -- Dave was not one of them," said Nicole D. Delaney '92. [ref]
  • Libby Turowski, one of the graduate tutors in the entry where Moore lived, called his death "a real tragedy." "He was one of the students that dropped by, and brought other students by," she added. [ref]
  • After a February hearing, the Committee on Discipline recommended that Andrew W. Howitt G, a former Senior House graduate resident tutor, be expelled because of his conviction on drug-related charges, according to several student sources...... Howitt was convicted on charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute in Cambridge District Court on Dec. 11 of last year. He was sentenced to two years probation and 50 hours community service. ... Howitt, a fifth year graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was suspended as the Holman entry tutor at Senior House in July, when allegations that he had supplied students with drugs first surfaced. ... It is a widely held view among Senior House residents that the Institute made Howitt a scapegoat in the aftermath of the death of David M. Moore '91, who fell from a fifth-floor Senior House balcony last July. According to several sources, Moore was under the influence of LSD when he fell.
• 2000-Mar-24 Chris Millard '96
  • Former MIT student Chris Millard fell to his death from the roof of Phi Beta Epsilon in an apparent suicide. Millard was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General Hospital after the fall Friday night. He was 24 years old. [ref]
  • Millard, who lived at PBE although he did not attend classes, had worked at a Boston Internet startup firm. He recently quit his job in Boston and had planned to move back home to California in a few days, said Dharmesh Mehta '00, a PBE brother. [ref]
  • PBE brothers have stated that Millard was not intoxicated and that no organized event was taking place on Friday night. Most of the brothers were away for spring break at the time, and there were no witnesses to the fall. [ref]
  • Mehta described Millard as being "creally athletic," and stated that he played nearly every intramural sport for which PBE fielded a team. However, Mehta also characterized Millard as having "had his share of hard times." Millard was laid up for a long period by a severe back injury. Millard eventually recovered fully and resumed playing sports for PBE's IM teams, "He really toughed it out," Mehta said. PBE brothers said that they were not aware that Millard had any emotional problems prior to his death. "He really did what made him happy. Some days he would decide that he wanted to play sports, and he would play sports. Some days he would decide that he wanted to go to class, and he would go to class," said Mehta.
  • At a memorial service in the MIT Chapel on Monday evening, friends of Mr. Millard recalled a loyal friend nicknamed Duck. They laughed a little and cried a lot as they remembered the camaraderie of hockey and soccer games, a 69-hour poker session, video game marathons and endless shared pizzas. "The only thing sadder than having lost Chris would have been not to have had him at all," said Dharmesh Mehta, a senior and former president of PBE. [ref]
• 1988-Apr 8 Mark R. Kordos '89
  • Mark R. Kardos '89 died last Friday when he jumped off the 13th floor of MacGregor House. Kordos, 18 years old, came from Morristown, NJ, and was majoring in computer science. In addition to being a straight-A student, Kordos had been active in the Musical Theatre Guild, playing lead roles in two productions. [ref]
  • Robert M. Randolph, associate dean of student affiars and head of the Student Assistance Services, described Kordos as someone who set very high goals. "He was quite demanding and a perfectionist," Randolph said. [ref]
  • Two courses, Computer Language Engineering (6.035) and Automata, Computability, and Complexity (6.045J) had been troubling Kordos in the past few days, Randolph said. "The day he died, there was a test in 6.045J, and he was apparently frustrated," Randolph said. Kordos had a 5.0 grade point average, Randolph added. [ref]
  • Kordos lived in A-entry at MacGregor. Robert S. Kennedy '59, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and housemaster at MacGregor, described Kordos as a "superb student who wanted to do well." [ref]
  • In Kordos's room there was a very brief note which he had left for his family, Glavin said. But it made no mention of his academic situation this semester, she stressed. [ref]
  • Jumped from MacGregor [ref]
  • Randolph said a "reliable source" told him that Kordos had ingested a large amount of asprin before he fell out his window. "Because of this some people might believe that what happened on Friday was not a suicide," Randolph said, but "rather a cry for help." Nevertheless, the Suffolk County medical examiner yesterday ruled the death a suicide. He would not comment on whether high levels of asprin were found in the body during the autopsy. [ref], ref]
  • Suzanne M. Wurster '89, who went to the same high school as Kordos, explained that kordos was very smart and always demanded a lot from himself. He finished high school in three years. There, he participated in plays, the math team, and the science club, Wurster said. [ref]
  • He continued his interest in the theater when he joined the Musical Theatre Guild in the fall of 1985. He served as secretary between the fall of 1985 and the fall of 1986. Scott E. Ramsey, treasurer of MTG, said that Kordos was a very good singer and had played the lead roles in "Diamonds in the Rough" and "West Side Story". In the spring of 1987, Kordos left MTG to spend more time on his schoolwork, Randolph said. [ref]
  • he was a junior in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and he was 18 years old. [ref]

  • When he came to MIT three years ago, he typified, in every respect, the finest qualities of our American youth -- religious, a fine citizen, healthy in mind and body, the product of a loving and sharing family, gentle, friendly, helpful, courteous, compassionate, witty, and very nice-looking -- truly the all-American boy. He was a tireless worker and truly exemplified the work ethic that built our country.

    Mark had a brilliant mind and an outstanding academic record. But he valued his play and leisure time as much as he dedicated himself to meeting the responsibilities of his "gifts." He loved music, sang, played piano and guitar, and appeared on stage every chance he could. As many have remembered him in recent days, he was truly "a gentleman and a scholar." He was the best our country could produce, and he was a part of the future hope of our country.

    At MIT Mark was an officer and performer with the Musical Theatre Guild in his freshman and sophomore years. He played intramural sports. He tutored other undergraduates. During all summer vacations and inter-sessions Mark worked as a highly-regarded member of the Applied Research Area at Bell Communications Research in New Jersey. Academically, he worked tirelessly to maintain a 5.0 grade point average -- that is until the demands of the "system" became too great!

    Unfortunately, Mark never thought in terms of personal limits; they just weren't part of his make-up. When teachers and TAs demanded twice as much effort and one more "pound of flesh," Mark, in total commitment and conscientiousness, just grumbled a bit (sometimes a lot) and simply produced what was expected. And when they increased their demands again and again (often with total disregard for human endurance or mental well-being), Mark would always produce, even when it meant total sleep deprivation for 48 hours or perhaps more...

    Group projects were another factor in Mark's undoing. ... the most conscientious person in any group always ends up doing most of the work. What a curse! Mark complained of this every semester, and never more-so than this semester. When one member of a group strives to do only the best work possible while other members are satisfied with mediocrity, stress multiplies on the conscientious one. Mark sought ways to improve this imbalance -- even considering his "drop" option. But, in the end, Mark was no quitter; he couldn't do that to his partners...

    In its quest to remain the premier institute in training and graduating the best-prepared and most-promising engineers and scientists in the world, MIT has become de-humanized. And by disregarding the limitations of the human mind and body, MIT has truly become a second-rate university. MIT, the "system," and society took our son, and victimized him. What a price to pay to maintain your world-class standing! How many more will follow Mark?

    Ronald and Betty Kordos

    [ref, ref]
• 1988-Jun-15
• 1988-Jun-15