Inexplicable and Tragic

Stanford University is on everyone's top-10 list of colleges. It has an admit rate of 3.95% (2,190 out of 55,471), comparable to Harvard and Yale. Once a student has been accepted, it's not too difficult to get a Bachelor's credential---at least that's what Stanford degree holders have been telling me for 50 years. (Of course, if a student wants to go to graduate school, she has to keep up her grades.)

Katie Meyer captained the soccer
team to the national championship.

A Stanford degree opens a lot of doors, and the hardest part is getting admitted. There are no guarantees of career success, but there's no question that attending Stanford confers work and life advantages.

That's why it has been inexplicable, and tragic, that there have been a number of undergraduate suicides in the past year.

[Soccer captain Katie] Meyer was at least the fourth Stanford student to unexpectedly die in just over a year, and the third to die by suicide. As the Stanford community reeled, many called on university administrators to do more to change what’s been described as a toxic culture for mental health — one that encourages students to brush aside their personal dilemmas.

Rose Wong

Last February, Stanford said medical student Rose Wong was found dead by suicide in an on-campus residence. Six months later, engineering student Jacob Meisel was killed in Palo Alto after being struck by a train in what the Santa Clara County coroner ruled a suicide. This year, in late January, law student Dylan Simmons was found dead in an on-campus residence...

Just a month ago, university officials recognized a mental health crisis on campus, writing in an email to students and staff following “publicly visible medical emergency” that students “have shared feelings of high levels of stress and disconnect over the past few months.”

Jacob Meisel

The suicide of any young person is tragic. From experience we know that eventually the intense feelings about the worst losses and disappointments will diminish and there will be moments of joy again.

While their lives were not worthier than others on the scales of cosmic justice, Katie, Rose, and Jacob stood an excellent chance of leaving the world a better place and of finding eventual fulfillment, if they had chosen life, and we are all poorer for their decision.