College Suicides

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New page April 18,2007

The Virginia Tech shooting is also evidence of Subliminal Distraction causing suicides of students.

The link above takes you to a new page. 

A new case has been located Joe Grozelle disappeared Oct. 22, 2003 and was found drowned  Nov. 23, 2003. He was a Canadian,  Royal Military College Cadet. Click this line.

"Amanda "Mandy" Hafleigh, a second-year American literature student, died last Thursday night in her room on the third floor of Dykstra Hall in what police say is an apparent suicide. She was 19."  Daily Bruin

 Amanda Hafleigh entry bottom of this page.

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   Theory         Articles and Statements  online     Examples/Cases    PREVENTION

If you  came  to this page because you received an email  or read a  forum post seeking information on a student suicide this is the information I want from you.

There is no rush. I understand some friends or parents will not have this information. I am asking for your cooperation in collecting  as many of these observations as possible. Answer as many of the questions as you can. While you may not have an answer to questions  the list is being positioned in advance of another incident involving another student.

If your student is not listed below it is because of my health problems and those of my wife. If I emailed you I have a file folder with information on your student.

Beginning information to be gathered if possible is a description of the computer workstation involved. If the CPU was observed on top of the desk estimate the distance between a vertical center line of the monitor viewing screen and the center line of the CPU tower. Simple measurements values should be used since most information will be from memory or pictures taken by friends. For instance, did the tower almost touch the monitor? Was something between the monitor and tower? Would you say the tower was far to one side? Which side? Was there a workspace on the side of the keyboard away from the monitor? Where was the non-computer work done?

If the tower was mounted correctly under the desk describe the room.

Did the student have hobbies, pets in the room?

If the student had a laptop computer, or a non-tower CPU case, relative to either side of  the position where the computer was used, was there anything in the room that moved? This would include ceiling fans, oscillating fans or heaters, lava lamps, toys, or blinking lights. The movement must be located near the computer user unless it is a reflection of light or point source of light in a dim room. Give a rough description  of color, reflectivity, size of the object, distance from the computer, and approximate position using the computer as 12 o'clock on a clock face parallel to the floor. Directly behind the student would be 6 o'clock. (Just describe the situation as well as you can.)

Was the student nearsighted? Did he or she wear contacts?

If the student had a roommate in a dorm room describe the room. Were there any provisions at the desk or study area to block peripheral vision of the student?

Can the roommate be reached to report on behavior using the study area or computer workstation?

Is any one aware of a work or study area the student spent time almost daily? (The total amount of exposure may be the critical factor.)

Did the student have a Playstation or other video game machine? Did they play games with others, dual controller?

Did he or she play CD or Internet games, MMORPG's? Name the game if  you can.

Did the computer have a screensaver? Try to find the name of the screensaver. There may be a descriptive file name on the hard drive. If  you can't find those items describe the screensaver.

If  you have possession of the computer look for large files the student created such as term papers. This might provide a clue for you as to what a delusional belief system might be. This is a long shot. It might stir a memory of something done or said by the student.

There is no point in gathering more involved information until a possible pattern develops.

Send your message by replying to the email I sent you or email the WebMaster.

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General Theory Description:

When I first  understood that I would need this page I thought it would be the most difficult to research. When a student commits suicide or dies after disappearing the web pages devoted to them are removed. As I began I found that there have been cluster suicides at certain schools. This points to a problem with work and study space at those schools.

This injury is a rare occurrence. There is no way to determine which student will be effected or which will accumulate enough exposure to cause the mental break. That's why the Cubicle was created for the business office.  The belief in the office furniture industry is that only a busy office can create the situation and exposure to cause the mental event. Additionally the office furniture industry thinks that the problem creates a temporary dissociative episode which resolves with no treatment. My wife is a victim. She is psychotic and evaluated as seriously mentally ill after about thirty days exposure in a University Payroll Office. (Personal Experiences page)  College administrations are unaware of the problem.

If the problem were included in the DSM it would appear as the cause of delusional depression or psychotic depression.

Cluster Suicides

The pool of students for colleges is the same. The rigor at one school is no different than similar schools. Yet the rates of suicide at schools are  vastly different. This points to engineering design problems at the seriously effected schools. The simple change of the study area in two person dorms, by moving study desks and computer monitors so that the student faces into a corner would provide Cubicle Level Protection due to the converging walls. If that is not feasible a  simple privacy panel of pegboard or corkboard would block peripheral vision on the side of the desk facing the room if the desk remains as normally positioned. That is the solution used in Systems Furniture Workstations.

A paper posted on-line by Philip Greenspun, argues that the suicides at MIT are a Poisson Process. The paper points out that suicides occur near finals. The argument is that mid-terms and finals  are a source of stress to cause the suicides. Time periods surrounding midterms and finals are also the times of heavy computer use and intense study. Both study from printed works and computer use are behaviors that require the mental state, deep concentration, which allowed discovery of the phenomenon fifty years ago.

http://www.philip.greenspun.com/research/suicide-at-mit.pdf

If the student perceives the subliminal stimulus as reinforcement of a worried stressful mental state with preexisting concerns of failure, the dissociative break might cause a sudden deep despondency. This is a psychotic belief system. One or two B's, might be the foundation, which would determine the path of the dissociative episode.  As the victim slips deeper into the alternate reality outsiders might see depression rather than a narrowly focused delusional state. (This is difficult to explain to someone who has not seen an episode progress  to a psychotic paranoid state.) Efforts to stop the plunge to death will not succeed unless that effort occurs early enough to interrupt the 'accidental operant conditioning.' Early removal of the student from the environment, source of stimulus, should result in a complete recovery.

Out-of-the-blue suicides are defined as suicides in which the person had no previous detectable symptoms. No warning is given to friends and classmates.  They die as a suicide even though there were no outside indications to family or friends that a despondent state existed. That's because for out-of-the-blue suicides, consciously, there was no depression until very near the end.  Remember, the victim is not aware of the stimulus. The isolation of a dorm room may work to hide the on-going process. Jeremy April was in close contact with his roommate during a drive back to school. The roommate did not detect a depressed or suicidal mental state. Yet Jeremy left a note describing extreme unbearable despondency just hours later.

A different course was demonstrated by Shawn Woolley. He exhibited a decline over weeks demonstrated by the condition of his apartment. Two other examples are Jed Satow, suicide,  and missing student Joseph Morse. Both stopped attending class, Morse didn't take finals. The isolation of an apartment or dorm room keeps friends unaware of the decline. The subject must do or say something outside normal reality before the condition is discovered. (None of the cases will have identical facts.) (Look at the expression on Morse's face in the ATM photos posted on the FBI missing person's site.)

Why is this a problem for some students and not all? We don't know the total number of students effected. When a student just fails and leaves school, is the cause of their inability to concentrate or study SPVP? How would anyone ever know?  Suicide is the worst outcome but not the only outcome.

How are both courses leading to suicide possible from the same phenomenon? The phenomenon is Accidental Operant Conditioning. Different rates of stimulus or different concentrations of stimulus in a compacted time frame will have different outcomes.

The phenomenon was discovered in the business office. There the eight hours of stimulus at the work desk creates a temporary episode which resolves with no treatment.

If ICU psychosis is also caused by this phenomenon it would demonstrate the effect of almost round the clock exposure. In that situation the psychotic behavior begins in a very few days. Most cases are said to recover with no treatment.

In the case of school shooters, some of them are in prison still undergoing  psychiatric evaluations years after the shooting. One says people are watching him in the shower through the heater vents. This is one of my wife's delusions.  A psychiatric evaluation, in hospital, recorded her fear of peeping toms in the shower. Another  school shooter admits to hearing voices.  These subjects were exposed at a different rates and for different time frames. Their sessions of exposure would have happened after school and nights. The most likely source of this adverse stimulation is the home computer workstation. The way the workstation is used determines the facts of exposure.

On the Everquest Connection page I note that the addiction to Internet game playing was caused because the ambiance of the game, middle earth, dungeons, dragons, closely matching  the commonly perceived sense of the subliminal stimulation. One would expect, based on the stimulation coming from behind, the common perception would be the sensation of being watched, in danger. or of suspense. There is little reason to believe the stimulus has a complex meaning or sense except that supplied by the victim's mind. Your mind can alter the sense of the stimulus based on contemporaneous activity and your mental state. 

What the victims mind perceives the sense of the stimulation to be and how that interacts with the contemporaneous activity, belief system, cultural values, worries, and general mental state should  determine the direction the dissociative/psychotic mental break takes. The process would also cause Student Disappearances. In our family case Connie believed she was about to be arrested because of mistakes she made in payroll accounting reports. Personal Experiences

Even if the event is a simple uncomplicated Dissociative Break the on-set would be devastating to the student with preexisting psychiatric symptoms. Based on what I saw happen to my wife if the student does not have such symptoms this phenomenon will scramble their brain and cause psychiatric symptoms..

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Articles and statements online.

Health center combats student suicide
Suicide Prevention Program addresses needs of struggling students with outreach, counseling
By Amanda Reavy | Contributing writer
Published Thursday, April 22, 2004

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/1792

University Counseling Center Director Tom Seals
"The suicide of a resident adviser at a University residence hall last week was the third suicide to take place on campus this year, Seals said....Every student who has gone through the Suicide Prevention Program has done so successfully, Seals said. All completed suicides after 1984 fall under the category of "out of the blue suicides," in which a victim has made no known prior attempts or threats, he said."   (See Jeremy April, Union college,  below, out of the blue example.)

These "out-of-the-blue" suicides are being caused by a sudden mental event creating deep despondency. That mental event is caused by Subliminal Distraction exposure and is the subject of this site. Fear, depression, and paranoia can be observed as negative outcomes of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. Both exercised create the "special circumstances" for exposure from SD. Typically colleges do not respond when I send them this information.

*****

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Examples This section is unfinished, do the best you can.

In each of these cases the design of the computer workstation or the level of use is unknown.  As time permits information on each case will be sought. The issue to be determined is: Are these deaths true suicides? 

Grinnell College

Paul Shuman-Moore April 18, 2007

A worker preparing the Grinnell Country Club  pool for summer removed the cover to find the bound body of Grinnell College sophomore Paul Shuman-Moore. He had disappeared September 25, 2006 and there was an extensive search for him. An autopsy was performed and police investigations determined he bound his own hands and feet with duct tape. The country club was a short distance from the college and the grounds had been searched several times.

A YouTube video by friends and a Geraldo Report shows him in a Frisbee tournament Saturday afternoon, playing guitar at Bob's Underground Sunday night, went with friends to a party, then walked to the dorm using his card at 1:23 am Monday morning.

Paul told his roommate he was going to a movie with a girl. The roommate later found a letter in a notebook that might have been a suicide note or a message that he wanted to disappear. He left with only the clothes he wore and his college ID.

http://www.examiner.com/a-681589~Chicago_student_committed_suicide__authorities_say.html

There are articles and news accounts that he was despondent before disappearing.

Link posted 5/31/07  http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=DF139538-D291-4746-B822B35CF6F936E2

Geraldo Report Video YouTube   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq1MHAMF6X0

Manhattanville College, NY

Joseph Zahornacky Jan 18, 2007

The body of  Joseph Zahornacky was located in Lake Lillinonah, near Bridgewater, Connecticut. Monday night, Jan. 15, he had called his mother at 8:30 telling her he was on the road to school. He was returning to school driving from LaGuardia International Airport after visiting friends in Los Angeles during the winter break. When he had not called after two hours, worried about reports of fog, she called him and learned he was about twenty minutes from his destination.  Tuesday his 2000 Jeep Cherokee was sighted by police sinking in the lake. He was recovered after a two day search of the lake. An autopsy confirmed that foul play was not involved. Investigators cannot explain how he got nearly 50 miles from his destination, the Manhattanville campus.

His debit card was used for gas and to make purchases from Walgreen's at I- 95, which indicates he reached a point just a few miles from the college. Surveillance video shows him alone, buying soap and toiletries. Reports that he spoke to a woman, video taped,  were proved untrue. Several news sources quote a friend, Logan Osberg, as speaking to him by phone arranging to watch movies and hang out when he arrived within ten minutes. (Times of that phone conversation vary in news accounts.) One account mentions he lived in a dorm.

No one who spoke with him was aware of any planned suicide. They say he sounded normal and up beat. Why would he buy toiletries if he planned suicide?
 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/v-pfriendly/story/489602p-412351c.html

Princeton

Manzilli Davis April 10, 2006

The San Mateo County Coroner's office identified Manzilli Davis a suicide while on a trip to East San Mateo. He was a high achieving student and a movie buff. He had written 2000 movie reviews on-line. He would have graduated in 2006.He died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/19/news/15686.shtml?type=printable

Stanford 

There are articles and forum posts complaining about the lack of mental health services at Stanford. That will not help stop student suicides that are caused by exposure from Subliminal Distraction. In an altered mental state the student is not thinking rationally. They may believe they are going crazy. You can see the outcome of exposure from SD in the outcomes of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. (See those site pages here.) Qi Gong psychotic reaction is included in the DSM as a Culture Bound Syndrome but not the Awakening of Kundalini. These mental events happen around the world but rarely result in suicide. Each ethnic culture understands the mental break in their own terms. The strangest outcomes are the startle-matching behaviors such as Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome. From our family experience I know that one of the first things to happen from exposure from SD is hearing voices.

Mengyao "May" Zhou Stanford  Jan 2007

"...the body found inside the trunk of a car at Santa Rosa Junior College Thursday morning is that of Mengyao "May" Zhou, according to Santa Rosa police."

The death is being treated as a suicide because of articles found in the trunk with the body. But there is no mention of what those were in the news release. She was a PH.D. candidate in electrical engineering and the stress of qualifying exams is being blamed for her death.

Yi-Tong Zhou a software engineer, her father, stated she had already passed the qualifying exams and stress was not a factor.

She left her apartment telling her roommate she would run errands at 10:30 Am on Jan 20th. Authorities are mystified as to why she was ninety miles north of Stanford in the parking lot of a junior college.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=4404

Giancarlo Colombo

He was one of only five students accepted into the jazz and classical program at Northwestern University but chose Stanford instead. While at Stanford in addition to his music practice, entering piano competitions, he maintained a 4.0 academic grade point.

I have a communication from a source near his family that stories published in news accounts are wrong. After visiting family and friends he drove his car to railroad tracks got out and lay down placing his head on the track. The same source says his roommate will not speak about the event.

Comments on a tribute site tell of his having problems leading up to the event. I have not cited the comments because they are from individuals that I cannot verify.

http://giancarlo-colombo.memory-of.com/

http://questscholars.stanford.edu/profiles/staff_bios/staff_gcolombo.htm

Mahroof Azhar

Azhar was a first semester student at Stanford. He had won awards in high school but is said to have done poorly at Stanford. Just before Christmas he poured gasoline on himself in the bathroom of his family's apartment and lit it. He died in a hospital later.

http://suburban.gmnews.com/news/2006/0629/Schools/050.html

Georgia Tech

Daniel Compton

Even before he was found Compton's family requested that nothing be released about him. Since his death they requested that the police not  reveal any details of the events surrounding his death. He was the second Georgia Tech student to disappear and be found dead. He was in his parked car, a suicide. He was about to graduate and had plans to attend grad school.  He drove away from a party and disappeared. There was no indication that he planned to commit suicide.

Joseph Morse - cause of death undetermined

May 6th, 2000  A freshman mechanical engineering student, he walked away as he was packing to go home from Georgia Tech. It was the morning of finals according to one source. He was observed withdrawing cash from an ATM and has not been seen since. A posting on a local bulletin board site states that Morse left all his belongings in his dorm room. An article in the alumni magazine describes a decline in his class attendance after spring break and his failure to take finals.  Stories published say that  he walked to the shower, spoke with friends along the way, may have left a wet towel in the  shower and has not been seen since. He spoke of registering for summer classes and a Co-Op job. After he disappeared the family discovered he had not registered for summer classes. The Georgia Tech press release cites his 3.4 GPA and gives Cincinnati as his home. He did wear glasses but the reason is unknown.  There is no mention of a dormroom computer. (FBI missing persons site and Ga. Tech Police Department site.) There is no personal page posted by friends or family.

Four years later Georgia Tech police found that he died in Miami Florida the day after he left Tech. There is a story in the Miami Herald that the  sheriff's office is was seeking the identity of an unknown male who broke into a construction site, climbed a 187 foot construction crane and jumped.  If you have information the contact page will be in operation soon.

I found one comment on a Technique archived page that Joe Morse played Playstation Football with friends in the dorm. That is one element to establish that he may be a Dissociative Fugue victim.

http://nique.net/master.php3?issue=2000-08-25&story=2

http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/archive/news_releases/morse.html is a press release from Georgia Tech with an email address.

http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/sum01/article1.html        This Alumni magazine article has the most information.

http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/nique/master.php3?issue=2000-06-30&story=1

http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/technique/master.php3?issue=2000-08-25&story=2   Both links are to the Technique.

http://www.police.gatech.edu/msjm.htm  Georgia Tech campus police department notice.

University of Houston Downtown

Nate Hendrickson

Texas Equusearch is reporting that a body found near a lake is believed to be Hendrickson. The body appears to have been there about a month. He is an apparent suicide. 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3556991.html

Twenty-four year old Nathanial Hendrickson has not been seen since November 30th. He had an argument with his stepfather then made phone plans to meet a friend, according to an interview on Nancy Grace, December 22nd. His wallet and cell phone were left in his room but his Teal 2000 Nissan Sentra is missing. (Tx Lisc L76DKL) Accounts mention that he took nothing with him.  There was a mention that the "family gun" is missing.

His employer at a Mexican restaurant said he had not missed work or been late until the disappearance.

He was last seen using a family computer. A computer was pictured on the Nancy Grace program and it was correctly positioned with the LCD screen in a corner. There did not seem to be any design problem with the workstation. But I did not see the CPU placement in that short film segment. Police may have removed it.

His car has been found in a mall parking lot. Tickets on the car show it was abandoned on December 1 the day after he disappeared. There were no additional clues associated with the car.

It would help to know what the argument was about. There are several cases where there was some disturbance just before the student committed suicide or disappeared.

The last post date on his My Space account is not correct. His sister's post states that the entry was by the My Space administration attempting to find information about him.

Most of these links are no longer active but you may be able to use the WayBack machine to find them.

My Space Blog Site for Nate.      http://www.myspace.com/natehend

Sister Alicia's blog site includes info about Nate. http://www.myspace.com/lesha84  

Texas Department of Public Safety, Missing Person's bulletin.     http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/mpch/mpdetails.asp?id='M12/6/20054:01:36PM'

  Active link March 2007- Car found  http://www.click2houston.com/news/5665615/detail.html

 Royal Military College Kingston Ontario Ca

Joe Grozelle

Joe Grozelle disappeared Oct. 22, 03 and found drowned Nov. 13, 03.  He was last seen by his girlfriend doing school work on his computer. He left the dorm sometime later that night in a thunderstorm. Two autopsies were performed attempting to find a reason for his actions. At the time of the disappearance he had been working on midterm exams and papers.

This case has been resolved as a suicide. There is no information about a roommate or the type of computer he used.

Possible connection:

• He was last seen using his computer;

• He was studying for exams;

• He left with just what he was wearing;

• There was no previous hint of depression;

• There is a mention of an undisclosed problem.

Union College

Jeremy April   

Jeremy committed suicide with no warning to family or friends. Information posted on-line indicates he visited his mother in the hospital, picked up his roommate, and drove to their dorm (hour or more drive). After the roommate went to sleep he wrote a note and took an overdose of medication. This is a familiar pattern for some suicides. There was no indication to those close to him that there was a long term depression problem. He had just been accepted to the US Ski team. He wrote a note indicating deep despondency. The note was evaluated as a sign of deep depression. Was it a feature of the sudden onset of a bizarre episode?

Did he use the computer or play video games  before the suicide?

University of Arizona

Jed Satow  -  John Goodstein

Jed committed suicide after a dispute with a girlfriend. The suicide was not at school . The Jed Foundation is named for him. Information on several Internet pages tell that he had stopped attending class and may have remained in his room in the last few days before he returned home. One of his close friends and fraternity brothers John Goodstein also committed suicide after Jed. Neither family, friends, nor the school suspected a possible common cause.

Goodstein appeared at meetings, participated in fraternity support for the Jed Foundation yet when he too committed suicide it was accepted as caused by depression. There was  no suspicion raised that something undiscovered was at work.

CNBC aired a program featuring Goodstein's parents tonight June 25, 2005. They told a story of a popular student with no problems. He phoned his mother with the message that he was in trouble, about to fail a course. She talked to him for some time and believed they had resolved the problem. Some days later he uncharacteristically refused to go out with friends. His family got the message he had committed suicide by phone.

(My files on this second suicide  are on a CD saved at the last Windows system crash. I will fill this in as soon as I have time.)

MIT suicides

Elizabeth Shin - MIT

Elizabeth had problems with self  mutilation, cutting, from high school. Significant in the information available is that she began to see herself bleeding. That is a hallucination and indicated an altered mental state or possible psychotic behavior. There are two statements in the news reports involving making journal entries just before she suffered third degree burns over 65% of her body. One is unspecified and the other indicates computer use. The burn incident happened on April 10, 2000 she died in the hospital April 14.(She had candles placed on the floor and fell into them.)

I have two leads involving seizures, falls, and injuries while playing N64 games. I only have a short post on each. If Elizabeth had a seizure and fell her death might have been an accident. There is no information in the reporting that she was in an altered mental state.

Philip Gale  

This suicide is striking. Scientology was blamed for his death because he jumped from the top of an MIT building on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. He was a computer programmer and had created original software for Earthlink. He wrote a note including the equation for Newton's law of falling bodies on the blackboard, (Whiteboard?), drew a stick figure throwing a chair through the window, then broke a window with a chair, just as he had drawn, and jumped.  My system crashed and I have not burned the 'saved data' I rescued before Windows 98SE bit the dust. I have initial inquiries/emails out but no results.

NYU cluster suicides

Michelle Gluckman

Reports are that while visiting  friends and sitting smoking marijuana, half of a cigarette divided between three people, she suddenly said "I gotta' get out of here,"  went to the kitchen and began throwing things sitting in her way on the window sill. She then crawled head first out the window. Efforts to stop her failed.

I don't understand how any one reading that account did not see it as a sudden psychotic episode.

Messages were left on sites related to NYU. Emails to NYU are unanswered.

John Skolnik 

September 12, 2003 Skolnik is reported as having fallen from an interior walkway. There is little on-line about the incident. Most reports focus on his summer trip to Cuba and that he was a language student. He planned to be an interpreter. The sites repeat the same Associated  Press news releases.

Stephen Bohler

October 10. 2003, Stephen jumped from a balcony inside the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library four weeks after Skolnik. Statements posted on forums at NYU, Daily Jolt, argue he should not have died. Friends tell a story of a popular well adjusted student. Other news reporting agrees that Bohler and Skolnik had no previous behavior disclosing depression or any other problem. Seventh floor residents at Samuel Rubin Residence Hall reacted with disbelief when the news arrived. He had joined the swim team and made plans for a trip to Europe  with a roommate. Hallucinogenic mushrooms were implicated in this death.

An article at the Nineronline states that Bohler was with two friends on their way to a late lunch when he suggested they go to an upper floor of the library. He stayed back while the friends looked over the rail. As the two friends started back to the elevator he walked forward and stepped over the rail.

Note the similarity with Phillip Robert Augustin, Cornell below, and Michelle Gluckman, NYU above. Each suicide was before witnesses and the victim seemed normal until just before the act. Only Gluckman demonstrated agitation.

http://www.nineronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/18/408401952442d

George Washington University

Chris Bartok   -  This death was ruled an accident. It is included because of the odd circumstances.  He was only missing a few days.

Although a freshman law student, Chris, 26, had a degree in Engineering from CalTech and had studied cooking. After celebrating the end of finals, at McFadden's bar on Pennsylvania Avenue, he left telling friends he was going to a metro station. His friends said he did not appear drunk and apparently he took his usual walking route to his home in Arlington. After three days roommates called his mother and she reported him missing. His body was found in the river by a jogger He was wearing only T-shirt, socks and underwear. His missing pants and personal items, which would be harmed if they were wet, were found at Thompson's Boathouse. The water temperature that night was 35 degrees. The air temperature in December must have been low. The explanation of his activities does not add up. They do not point to a suicide.

His attention to detail at the July 4 barbecue point to a very careful person. If he was not drunk how did he get into the water?

Is  "Foggy Bottom Metro Station" a true location or slang for a metro site, and is it on his route back to campus or his apartment? (See his friends comment to his mother below.)

College friends paint a picture of a well liked friendly student:

"He was my dance partner. " ...whether we were in his living room or at a bar we would dance," Anderson said, adding that he would dance for hours despite the fact that "he just wasn't that good."..."

"Bartok's professors remembered an attentive student who was always prepared to answer their questions, and Roger Transgrud, a senior associate dean of the Law School, referred to Bartok's "towering intelligence" and "exemplary character."..."

"Bartok cooked a July 4 barbecue for incoming students, ensuring that "all burgers were the same size," ....Jessica .." Toplin said. (edited)

  All three quotes are from the same URL    http://www.gwhatchet.com/news/2004/01/12/MetroNews/Campus.Family.Remember.Students.Life-579675.shtml

Friends told Bartok's mother that while her son drank champagne, tequila and wine at McFadden's the night of his disappearance, he did not appear to be drunk when he said he was going to the Foggy Bottom Metro station.

http://www.gwhatchet.com/news/2003/12/08/MetroNews/Breaking.News.Authorities.Investigate.Students.Death-578599.shtml

This case parallels the drowning of several missing students. Chris Jenkins, Chad Sharon and others. There are pages of lists on-line of male students drowning after a celebration and drinking. In several of the cases the facts just don't add up. Warm weather accidental drowning might make sense. There has been no accounting of how these students got into the water in winter. This is happening in different jurisdictions so that a pattern has not developed. It isn't that each case is related to the phenomenon but that no investigation has been made to eliminate the phenomenon, SPVP.
 

Cornell

Phillip Robert Augustin

This suicide is similar in pattern to the suicide of Michelle Gluckman at NYU. About 10 PM Augustin was walking with friends along the Tidal Basin when he made a remark, turned and jumped into the water. His body was recovered an hour and fifteen minutes later. He is described as friendly, and so well known and well liked that he was known as the 'Mayor' of the campus.

The friends did clearly hear or understand his last statement.

There is nothing in the news stories to indicate depression or any other reason for his sudden action. Many of the student disappearance deaths involve drowning.

As you read these accounts imagine they had happened at the same school or in the same police jurisdiction.

_______

UCLA

There have been three suicides and one unexplained disappearance from Dykstra Hall, UCLA. (Michael Negrete is listed on the Missing Students page.)

Two person dorm rooms there are incorrectly designed. Pictures on-line show that structural support features of the building protrude into the dorm rooms. The position of that "post" determines how the study desk will be located. In some rooms the desks are in line with the bed. That exposes the student to possible subliminal detection of the roommate or others moving in the room.

When the structural member is located in the corner of the room there is not enough room for that arrangement and the desk is positioned perpendicular to the bed against the outside wall. The student's back is to the room. There would be exposure only as the roommate studies or comes and goes to the adjoining desk.

Repositioning two person dorm room study desks so that they face into the room's corners would provide Cubicle Level Protection.

Amanda "Mandy" Hafleigh

The Daily Bruin is now reporting Amanda Hafleigh as an apparent suicide. Her roommate from last  year is mentioned but not whether she had a roommate this year.

There is no mention of her study habits or if she owned a desk top or laptop computer.

The missing student case of Ron Tammen essentially connects the conflict of physiology to student disappearances but I am still looking for a smoking gun to connect the phenomenon to suicides. Missing Students

ARE YOU A STUDENT IN DYKSTRA HALL?

I need a copyright free picture of her dorm room or an identical room. I am interested in the arrangement of the study desks.  A picture of Michael Negrete in his room at Dykstra (Missing Students) showed that there was no protection for a concentrating student sitting at the desk if there was repeating, detectable movement in the room.      The Modern Cubicle

Did she have a computer in the room? Did the CPU have a blinking hard drive busy light? Was it on top of the desk? Where did she read, or study?

If you have not read other pages on this site you are unaware that the phenomenon of physiology discussed is probably causing suicides such as at MIT and NYU.

I cannot put everything on each page you must surf the site to understand this problem. HOME has the list of pages not in the java menu at the top of this page.

There has been much speculation that the increased rate of college suicides is somehow connected to the invention and use of computers. It has not occurred to anyone that it's the workstation not the computer.

Engineers discovered a conflict of physiology about fifty years ago. They were designing the first close-spaced workstations. Knowledge workers in them began having bizarre or psychotic episodes.

The problem was peripheral vision reflexes and the solution for the business office was the Cubicle.

Students have the same behavior knowledge workers do. They sit and concentrate many hours each day.

When a study area or computer workstation is located in a room with repeating detectable movement , it must have Cubicle Level Protection. Read ...Prevention... linked below.

Links

Psychiatric Times

Identifying and Treating Suicidal College Students by Elizabeth Fried Ellen, LICSW Psychiatric Times August 2002 Vol. XIX Issue 8

This article has recent information on rates of suicides, 2005.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p020801.html

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