As the daughter of a 1976 graduate, I had my first visit to Cornell on a beautiful June weekend when I was seven years old. Right then and there, I decided that Cornell was the best place on Earth.
As I got older, I was able to better understand the stories my mother told me about her college experience. This included tales of students jumping off bridges because they were so stressed out. I got some of the details wrong (until my sister enrolled in 2002, I thought there was a net in one of the gorges to protect suicidal Architecture students), but I understood the gist: Cornell was a stressful place. This has become even more apparent in the last month, after three student suicides in the gorges made national headlines.
There’s no question that college, any college, has its stressors. At my previous school, Keene State, I pulled multiple all-nighters and got plenty of disappointing grades. The difference I’ve found since transferring to Cornell is not just that the curriculum is harder, but that professors expect more from us. I realized that along with their high expectations comes a somewhat lower sensitivity level. This is not a place where professors often recognize that students also have a lot of work in their other classes. It’s not a place where they know all their students’ names. This is the kind of place where students can send page-long e-mails to their professors and sometimes get only half a sentence in response. It’s the kind of place where there is red tape, even at counseling services.
Running an institution of nearly 20,000 students can’t be easy, and constantly monitoring the welfare of those 20,000 must be impossible. I recognize that the University can’t be responsible for everyone’s mental health. And I do applaud the efforts to reach out to the students in the wake of the recent tragedies. But, let’s face it: it was too little, too late.
As a community we’ve lost twelve students this year-counting the two deaths over winter break that Cornell isn’t recognizing as part of the total. Six of those are being considered suicides. I have a hard time believing that none of them had to do with the stress of our academic environment. I will never forget my boss at the Cornell Store telling me that she loves working with transfer students because we are so easy-going—that because they have known college life outside of Cornell, transfer students seem happier.
I hope that even in the midst of these tragedies, students realize that we are lucky to get a priceless education in such a beautiful place (when the sun is out, anyway). I hope we can put life in perspective and realize we’re all going to be fine—that nothing, not even a failing grade, is the end of the world. But mostly, I hope that the University recognizes that we are, in the grand scheme of things, kids. I hope that they realize that while kids have to become adults, we need some comfort along the way—and sometimes we need to focus more on fun than on problem sets.
I have faith that Cornell is moving in the right direction. Just today, a professor who is notorious for those half-sentence e-mails gave me a hug.