<p>"If your S didn’t know the student or witness the event it could be that it’ll have little emotional effect on him. "</p>
<p>Very true. I remember at least one suicide a year when I was at Harvard. The only one that affected me was that of a girl whom I knew who threw herself under a subway shortly after she graduated. Even that – since I hadn’t known her that well – didn’t affect me that much.</p>
<p>Suicide now actually pales beside what I experienced as a college professor and the wife of a professor. One year, when I was on faculty, just before spring final exams, a student whom I had mentored for several years --even getting her a scholarship to the college – opened her dorm room and found the girl across the hall dying of stab wounds. I was the first person that my mentee called after calling police. </p>
<p>Anyway, immediately after my student informed me of the murder, I called the college’s counseling center, and they immediately went to the scene and put into action a counseling program.</p>
<p>(A male acquaintance – another student at the college --ended up pleading guilty to the murder. The apparent reason for the murder was that he had been stealing from the victim’s bank account by using her bank card, and she had noticed the thefts and was supposed to go the next day to try to identify the thief, who had been caught on camera at the automatic teller.).</p>
<p>Another year, there was a murder suicide that included a student who was in my husband’s class, and was extremely well liked, hard working, and nice. She was killed in the house she and others rented in our city in a very safe, upper middle class neighborhood. The murderer was a male acquaintance whom everyone said she was not romantically involved in: They were just longtme friends.</p>
<p>In case you’re wondering whether the school is noted for being dangerous or being in a very dangerous city – quite the contrary. It’s in a small city known for friendliness and safety. The campus itself also is very friendly.</p>
<p>My experience does make me wonder how frequently college students are killed by other students. Prior to what I have seen at the college that I had mentioned, the only other college homicide that I had ever heard of was the situation about 8 years ago in a Harvard dorm where a female undergrad student killed her roommate and then killed herself. The case was discussed in depth in, I believe, the New Yorker. I seem to recall that the article suggested that the student who killed the other may have had some kind of mental breakdown.</p>
<p>I suspect, however, that unless a colllege is very well known like Harvard, when students kill each other, the story may not be picked up beyond the local news.</p>