Jarrod Gutman | Taking responsibility for student suicide

The ancient Greeks abhorred suicide because it robbed the state of a potential solider. Two and a half millennia later, academics still debate the ethics of self-inflicted death. But when a college student thinks about killing himself, the scholarly discussion ends. Administrators must be prepared to respond immediately in ways that are appropriate and fair to both the student and the community.

Despite improving treatments for mental illness, suicide remains the second-leading cause of death among college students. And administrators must answer difficult questions about who should be notified when a student is suicidal and how to respond.

In 2000, the Iowa Supreme Court determined that college administrators are under no general obligation to prevent student suicide. But this has not stopped the families of students who attempt or complete suicide from suing - often successfully - when they feel colleges overreacted or did too little to help a suicidal student.

Last week, George Washington University settled a lawsuit in which a student, Jordan Nott, accused the university of punishing him for his mental illness. According to his attorney, in the fall of 2004, Nott sought emergency psychiatric treatment at GW Hospital. When hospital staff informed administrators, they banned Nott from campus, citing the need to protect the community. Nott claimed GW's disciplinary process eventually led to his dismissal from the school.

The GW settlement comes in the wake of several recent lawsuits surrounding mental illness on college campuses. Within the past six months, suits brought against Hunter College and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were settled in favor of students who, respectively, completed and attempted suicide on campus.

The MIT case rested on the existence of a therapeutic relationship between a campus counselor and a student. This precedent extends liability to a college at which a therapist sees a student in imminent danger but at which the administration fails to protect the student.

Legal analysts have offered one solution that might allow administrators to make informed, compassionate decisions when handling suicidal students. When a student seeks treatment at an on-campus mental-health center, the center could require the student to sign a waiver allowing the disclosure of suicidality to administrators. But the policy is controversial because state laws generally allow disclosure only to those necessary to treat the endangered person.

Implementing disclosure waivers at places like Penn's Counseling and Psychological Services might help administrators cover their bases, but it would also hurt students. Many who need help might choose not to seek treatment because of privacy concerns.

So far, according to CAPS director Ilene Rosenstein, Penn has not implemented such a policy.

"Sometimes, it is helpful for the student to have administrators or significant others involved; sometimes, it isn't," Rosenstein wrote in an e-mail. Whereas CAPS therapists do not break confidentiality, "the administration has heard of a student's suicidality from classmates, friends or family." Generally, though, students in "clear and present danger" are hospitalized, leaving it up to the student and hospital staff to decide whom to notify.

When administrators do become aware of a suicidal student, they can be tempted to overreact, as in the GW case. They may simply find it legally safer to summarily dismiss a student who threatens suicide than to further engage in his treatment.

According to Ed Rentezelas, interim director of Penn's Office of Student Conduct, "We've never had a disciplinary case involving a student attempting suicide." However, under the Student Disciplinary System, the administration retains the right to impose a mandatory leave of absence "when a student's presence on campus is deemed to be a threat to order, health [or] safety."

Certainly, administrators must protect themselves from being sued. But removing a student from campus - or worse yet, dismissing that student - due to mental illness is a hurtful policy. It is also probably illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act, although the GW settlement precluded Nott's lawyers from making this argument.

While Penn's policies appear fair, higher education at large has yet to strike a suitable balance between protecting the welfare of suicidal students and mitigating the responsibility of colleges for wrongful deaths.

Jarrod Gutman is a research coordinator in the School of Medicine from Philadelphia, Pa., and a College of General Studies graduate student. His e-mail address is gutman@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Fifth Column appears on Fridays.

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