<p>I think it is reasonable to set a day or time to connect with loved ones just because things can happen. With my kids in college it’s once a week. I don’t think I would have “missed” a son if I hadn’t heard from them in one week, but I would have wondered what was going on if we had a particular day to connect and I would be alarmed if I hadn’t gotten a text or quick phone call after around 10 days. It’s entirely possible parents of this student were not used to hearing from the young man more than every week or so. My 25 year old lives alone and we connect about 2x a month. I think its an extremely unfortunate thing, but I don’t think it calls for specific action other than perhaps raising a level of awareness that things can happen and that people who live in close proximity should be aware of their neighbors which is true in any neighborhood. </p>
<p>I had friends I hung out with in college but we were all pretty informal too. I might have eaten lunch most every Tuesday with the same couple of people because we were usually getting out of class around the same time, but it’s not like we all wondered what was wrong of one of the usual group wasn’t there one day. We rarely had specific plans to do things at particular times. So it wouldn’t have occurred to me to check on someone who I didn’t see at lunch or whatever. It would probably be at least a couple of days before I started wondering where someone was. </p>
<p>My mother is almost 91 and lives alone in another state. I speak to her almost every morning. If for some reason I don’t hear from her for a day I start to freak out. I think that after some years she has finally realized that if my sister and I don’t hear from her for a day or so we flip out and so she should call us regularly. Getting them to have an answering machine, when my father was alive, was a major triumph. We still can’t get her to take her cell phone with her when she goes out.</p>
<p>I have a close friend who lives alone about a half hour away. He’s in his 60s, and has had a heart attack. We are in in regular contact online and by phone. But again, if he doesn’t respond within a day I start to freak out.</p>
<p>My son, on the other hand…he’s very busy, and he just doesn’t understand.</p>
<p>When I go to camp, I basically call home before Shabbat, when I’m on overnight duty and bored stiff, and when I need money or shampoo or something :). My grandparents are making me sign a contract that they’ll give me money for some expenses if I call them once a week (I know they’re basically joking- it’s their type- but I know that it really matters to them). Calling home, especially after the first week, is just not necessarily on the radar.
On another note, something similar happened to my classmate’s brother when I was in sixth grade- he had spina bifida and was wheelchair bound, so he was in a special accessible dorm near the health center (far from his friends’) that happened to be a single. Two of his closest friends had gone away for the week and the others just didn’t think about not having seen him because he was in different classes than they were. While he had only been dead for about a day or so when they found him (his friends came back), it turned out that he’d died from something (unrelated to his condition) that had probably left him alive and semiconscious for several hours before he died. The entire situation was heartbreaking (as this UChicago case is), but unfortunately, it can happen and there’s not really anything to do about it.</p>
<p>Reading this story made me text my kid. Haven’t heard from him since sometime last week. He decided to stay on campus this week, even though they are on break. Since most of the kids are gone, he likely wouldn’t be missed either! </p>
<p>My grandma lives alone and fell and broke her hip in her basement a few months ago. The only reason it didn’t take us a week or more to find her is because her housekeeper,who she had recently fired and shouldnt have been there, happened to let herself into the house and was upstairs and answered the phone when my aunt called-- so she realized grandma’s car was in the garage and she must be home, and went looking for her. Thankfully not long after the fall or who knows what would have happened. We don’t see her all that often, her neighbors don’t either. If we called and she didn’t answer we would assume she is busy… I think it would probably be a good week or two before anyone would think it odd, and she’s known to give us all the cold shoulder so who knows how long it would take!</p>
<p>When I was in school, I only saw most of my friends once or twice a week, or less if we didn’t have classes together sometimes. We were busy, we were on opposite ends of town at meal times or had different schedules, we had a lot of different friends and maybe we had plans with somebody else, it’s not unusual at a big school to NOT have a group you take all your meals with. I was sick all the time and missed a lot of class, I am sure I missed a week or two at a time before and nobody said anything. You notice an absence but who would ever jump to thinking something is wrong when there are a million other possibilities?</p>
<p>It IS disheartening, it makes me sad. It’s a cruel way to die, and nobody wants to think of their loved one lying there like that for so long. This is just one of the sad parts about living alone I guess, that this can happen.</p>
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<p>Walk into any restaurant today and people have their phones in their hands. I am pretty sure face-to-face relationships are not as strong as they used to be. </p>
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<p>Haha this is me every week. “So yeah to sum it up my classes are good, OOPS IT’S 5:18 GOTTA GO LOVE YOU BYE.”</p>
<p>Seriously though my brother is t1 diabetic and I’m really nervous about him being away by himself. He definitely needs a roommate.</p>
<p>How sad! I did some web research to find out more about Nicholas Barnes and I am so saddened by his circumstances. It is definitely cause for reflection with my own child. My D is one who will not call or text every week, but I really don’t expect her to either. I will definitely sit down with her to establish communication expectations and to encourage her to participate at her university- be involved with the campus, the people and her community. </p>
<p>Okay, now I’m really freaked out because my D is going off to college far away in the Fall. I don’t think I can stand not to text, chat, or call her at least once a day.</p>
<p>I hear from my kids a few times a month, usually. We get along great but they don’t think to send a text or make a call unless something’s up. Most of the time, they are just engaged in their lives. When S was a freshman, I did get his room mate’s phone number and the mom’s phone number (but never called either of them, but did email the mom a few times & she replied).</p>
<p>Even now, I hear from the kids when they feel like calling, emailing or texting. It can be as often as weekly or less; rarely a bit more. My folks got letters from me as well as a monthly or so short phone call. I think D’s & S’s friends in college and room mates would have noticed something if she wasn’t around but they didn’t call me when she was having rather bad health issues (tho D hid them well).</p>
<p>Now, she lives in a house with two others. I am hoping they will let me know if something is up, but am not sure D has given them our contact info. Will try to ask her about it in the near future. She says they do text her if they haven’t seen her for a while.</p>
<p>My D goes to school in NYC. I installed the “my friends app” on our phones so I can silently check in on her if I haven’t heard her in a few days. My S is in school over seas so time difference does not make it easy to chat on a regular basis, and again, this app has been handy to see if he’s where he’s supposed to be without bothering texts and calls. It’s also a great app to have if you lose your phone.
My prayers go out to the family of this student.</p>
<p>We installed “find my iPhone” on their phones in case they are lost, but it’s also useful to see it they are moving around. Both of my college aged children text me daily, usually with a quick question or a good night. They also have an ongoing group message between themselves, my younger son at home, and H and me…sending funny pictures or little comments. It’s a nice way to keep our family connection on a daily basis. When I was in college, I called home every few weeks…technology now certainly makes it much easier to stay in touch.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a matter of face-to-face relationship building. I think it’s a matter of college students having lifestyles where they are less accountable for being in certain places at certain times than K-12 students or employed people are.</p>
<p>When my son was a freshman and had been at school a month or so I casually asked him how his roommate was doing. He said I don’t know I have not seen him for a few days. Further questioning led to the facts that he had not seen him at all and that the roommate had not been in the room for a least 3 days. He was friends with his roommate and they had many friends between the two of them.</p>
<p>Son believed it was absolutely none of his business. </p>
<p>I tried to explain to him that when you live with someone you have certain responsibilities. It is your responsibility to let people you live with know if you will be gone for a few days. You don’t need to say more than this. Just let them know you will be gone and when you might be back.</p>
<p>When son moved to another city and knew absolutely no one I insisted on a daily I am alive text. I told him until there is someone who will miss you if you suddenly disappear I am your safety net. Humor me. And he did.</p>
<p>Sometimes something seems abnormal only because we don’t have a good grasp of what normal is. College students go in a lot of different directions, and keep strange hours. It might not be odd at all to not see somebody for a week. People at some colleges may skip classes fairly often. And you can see a lot of people every day–if somebody is not super-close with anybody, it may take quite a while for somebody to miss him. And the first response will probably be to send texts or other messages to him.</p>
<p>I do see how this could happen, how a college student could not be missed for days and be in trouble, but it is so sad. I don’t consider myself to be all that social, but I do think I would have been missed if I had vanished for a day, maybe even a meal. </p>
<p>Sax, I plan on having my kids text me daily when the time comes that they are in some new place and unlikely to be missed! Surely an employer would miss them…but what if they were just traveling? I think the new technologies cut both ways in terms of connectedness. We can have more superficial Facebook-type friends who wouldn’t miss us, but we can also more easily drop a line to loved ones. There are people who live very virtual lives, playing online games and being very caught up in them and not having much human contact, but there are also people who connect more frequently.</p>
<p>We still have the weekly phone call with our son (yes, son!). I text him to find out when the best time to call is for the week. His dad would call more often and would Skype; I am trying to limit our contact so he can have some time without us. It is not unusual for us to text during the week over some other question, or just to share some small observation. As evidence of my geezerhood, I do share articles (clippings!) with him on fb when I see something he would like. (did your moms used to send you newspaper clippings? Mine did.) </p>
<p>If my mom doesn’t hear from me all day, she will send me a text in the evening saying, “hey, everything okay?” I think I have only ever gotten one “let me know you’re alive” text the next morning after one of those “everything okay?” texts didn’t get answered. We usually do text every day. But even then, if mom was busy, she might not have noticed until the end of the second day that we hadn’t texted, and then it would be into the third day before I’d even get the “let me know you’re alive,” text and how long does she go back and forth between panic and convincing herself she’s being paranoid before she actually calls the police?</p>
<p>I know I’ve seen threads here where parents have reported not hearing from their kids for a few days and the responses were NOT all a resounding, “hurry, call the police!”</p>
<p>Just last week one of my coworkers didn’t show up for work. The weather was kind of iffy so we assumed she stayed home and forgot to call in-- she’s usually SUPER reliable so we assumed she just forgot (and she did.) If she’d missed the second day, we would have called to see what’s up. We probably wouldnt have transitioned from confused to worried until the third day. </p>
<p>It just makes me sad when something bad happens and the bystanders feel guilty afterward when there is really nothing they could have done. I don’t think anyone should say that Uchicago or this kids friends did anything wrong. Sometimes this just happens. If you’re a student at a school with a really strong sense of community and a relatively small campus it is totally normal to have a group of kids you take all your meals with, but at a big school like mine (and judging from College Life mine isn’t the only one) it is common to be on opposite ends of town than your best friends at meal times, it isn’t unusual to not eat with your friends for every meal. Kids these days take huge course loads, work, and are in multiple student organizations, and not everybody is able to eat meals at the same time or meet up with all their friends every day. They could be at a club meeting, a study session, hanging out with another friend, any number of things that are WAY more likely than something being wrong. There’s just no way to know until it becomes obvious, and by then it is too late. We need to remember hindsight is 20/20, real life is not. And we can’t assume his absence went unnoticed, it very well could have been noticed-- just because somebody noticed doesn’t mean they were prepared to go break down the door.</p>
<p>Best way to get a response from a kid: Text pictures of family dog. Works every time. </p>
<p>Consolation - my son calls every few days - he is just that kind, he shares everything and is just a chatty person in general. Actually my kids call one another every few days, which warms my heart like you wouldn’t believe. I’d worry if they hadn’t talked to one another.</p>
<p>I am so sorry for this student and his family. </p>
<p>It is true that perhaps no one could have helped him, but I think there are real feelings of isolation on college campuses, and this story triggers a concern over those issues. This doesn’t mean that everyone feels isolated or has to have a lifestyle where they are constantly with a group of friends or even a particular friend, but some people do feel like they have no one who has their back. This brings out an emotional response in me, because I went to a big school, and at various points in time (thankfully not all the time or even most of it) felt isolated and as if I died in my room, no one would know for a while because there was no one that I saw all that regularly. There was even a story that the year before I arrived, someone in a single committed suicide, and no one found out for a few days until it started to smell. You could be in big classes, eat alone, study alone in the library etc. My senior year, a boy committed suicide and it took some weeks until they found him outside. He was an outwardly friendly person and had a group of friends, but even they didn’t know that he was so unhappy. I had met him a couple of times, and it was a profound shock to the community. </p>
<p>As to romancing the past, I think it depends on what college you went to, and how far past. A friend’s mother attended my college in the 1950’s. They had sign ins in the women’s dorm (no coed dorms then), and dress up for a sit down dinner. If you weren’t around, they noticed. In my time, there was none of this (1970’s). Today seems very similar to my day, at least from my kid’s school in terms of total freedom to do whatever, whenever, and perhaps no one will notice if you were gone. Even people who live in a group, like a fraternity or sorority house, might not get all that concerned if someone seemed to be gone for a day or two because they might be studying, in the lab, etc., and even if they usually showed up for dinner, they are not required to do so.Even in schools with “House systems” or “residential college lifestyles”, the Deans or live in advisors do a varied job at getting to know people. A lot depends on whether you want to be known or not. This is what is different from your family or some other more involved relationships. I grew up in a house where if you did not show up for dinner, they would have called out the national guard. If I hadn’t seem my grad school roommate for a day, I would have really been worried. We saw each other every morning, evening, and sometimes for lunch. Not everyone had a friend like that. I tell my daughter that the most lonely times I ever had were in college, not when I first moved to NYC and lived alone in a studio apartment. </p>