Facing Tragedy

A few days before spring break, students learned of the death of David L. Okrent '99 in an apparent suicide. Okrent's death follows the suicide in January of Annelle Fitzpatrick '00 and the suicides of two graduate students.

It would be far too easy to assign blame to institutions like the residential houses for failing to provide adequate support networks for students or to our professors and teaching fellows for burdening us with unrealistic amounts of work. But while blaming peoples may be a natural reaction, it cannot change what has already happened and it does nothing for our grief.

It is unlikely that any of us will ever fully understand the reasons or circumstances that led these students to take their own lives. Speculating on their reasons for making this choice, or using their deaths to make complaints about our own college or graduate experiences, are actions that many of us cannot help taking as we try to make sense of these tragedies. One of our greatest burdens when confronted with apparent suicides is the dilemma of how to react.

Let us make a tribute to their memory by making these students' deaths, and more importantly, their lives, into signs for ourselves: not as opportunities to trumpet our own causes on their behalf, but as signals reminding all of us to take notice of the people around us, to appreciate them and to care about them. While many of us never knew Okrent, some who were touched by his life, as well as those who were touched by the lives of others who died this year, have returned from spring break still grieving. If there is one thing that we can learn from death, it is that no one should ever have to feel as if he or she is going through life or through mourning alone. Perhaps we can ease the pain of those who are mourning if we let these tragedies remind us of our responsibility toward our peers and our friends.