students dealing with death...

As an aside to the whole "suicidal kids expelled" thing, I was reminded of an incident that happened at my old institution.

They had a suicide policy of their own: if a student committed suicide, we weren't to talk about it. This was to prevent copy cat suicides. A number of studies have found that students will indeed kill themselves if they know somebody else has.

One of my students came up to me after class. He seemed sort of nervous so I asked him what was up.

"Uh, I'm not going to be here on Thursday but I can't have an excused absence."
"Why not? You know my policy is for you just to be honest and get the work in ahead of time--"
"Oh yeah, that's not a problem, but see I'm going to my old roomate's funeral. He wasn't in school this term cause he was depressed and he--" and here the student furtively looks around as if he's going to say something horribly bad "--killed himself."
"God I'm really sorry."
"Yeah so the school says I can't have an excused absence, I'm not even supposed to let anybody know that I know about it."
"Yeah so," and here I spoke loudly, "You need that day off for an interview downstate huh? Good for you!" Which produced a smile, but ... sheesh.

Actually, most teachers don't follow or don't know the rules. I only knew them because an administrator happened to be in one of my graduate courses. He explained the basic policy, but I still hate it for two reasons.

One is that students who know these kids aren't ever allowed to publicly mourn. THEY don't get to have prayer services on campus for their classmates, or advertise them on campus if they want to have them off. And I think students need a time to mourn. I can't imagine just moving on as if nothing happened and not having any support besides University counseling where you feel you can tell the truth.

Second, I feared getting a note in my mailbox that said a student had killed themself. If we weren't allowed to talk about it, for fear of students following suit, what exactly do you say when the student's group members wonder where he or she has gotten to? How the HELL do you answer without crying? At least if they die some other way people can talk about it in class, admit that something horible has happened, and eventually let it go. It's been two years and remembering the conversation above still breaks my heart.

I realize that "studies" say that this sort of rule is necessary, but that doesn't mean that it feels right to me.