Warwick student’s unacknowledged death

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]niversity is a place where everyone is independent. The relationship between students and the academic staff becomes less personal and more professional. The impersonal relationship extends not only to our academic staff but also to the students in our seminars. Often we don’t bother learning the names of half the students in our seminar groups. Then there comes a point when you’re half way through the year and asking someone’s name who you’ve known for six months is just plain awkward. We don’t generally think about how impersonal university life can be, in fact, it only really hit me last year due to a truly shocking incident- the death of a student going unacknowledged.

While in a seminar of around 12 people it is not difficult for everyone to get to know one another, there are always some people who do not make an effort to form connections. There was this one boy in one of my seminars last year who did not entrench himself into the mini social-circle of our seminar, but his presence was still noted. There were two reasons why he managed to make an impression. The first was, he was surprisingly late to every class. His tardiness was so shocking there were instances when he would stroll in 45 minutes after the start of the seminar, and only stay for 15 minutes. The second reason for his notable presence was because my course is dominated by girls, and it is not unusual to have an astounding ratio of only 1 or 2 guys to 10 girls per seminar (which was the case here), undoubtedly making a male presence seem more pronounced. To add to this, this particular boy was blessed with strikingly good looks, which were evident despite the fact that he would stroll into class sloppily dressed in track pants or even in pyjamas. For the most part, his behaviour seemed odd, I ascribed it to pure laziness, but in hindsight, what I found out later, now makes perfect sense.

At the start of term 3, I noticed this boy wasn’t showing up to seminars and hadn’t been there for a long time. I assumed he had dropped out, or had changed seminar groups. No one knew for sure what had happened to him. One day I stumbled across his Facebook page, and received the shock of my life! He hadn’t transferred seminar groups, and he hadn’t decided to just not show up. The reason why he wasn’t showing up was because he could not show up, and would never show up again…HE WAS DEAD! His page was covered in “RIP”s and “you died so young”. I immediately informed my friends from my course who knew him about my discovery. It had already been three months since he had passed away.

He hadn’t transferred seminar groups, and he hadn’t decided to just not show up. The reason why he wasn’t showing up was because he could not show up, and would never show up again…HE WAS DEAD!

The one thing none of us understood was why we were not informed of his death by our academic staff? Could it be that the university just simply wasn’t informed of his passing? (Which could explain the eerie presence of his name still on the mailing list for the department). The disturbing thought that crossed all our minds was had they just not bothered telling us?

I have heard of quite a few people who died last year, and I wonder how their departments’ dealt with them? Was an email sent out to acknowledge it, or was it perhaps announced in a lecture or seminar? Surely the death of a student should not go unannounced.

The one missing piece of the puzzle remained, the exact cause of his death. Just around a week ago, I found out what had actually happened to him from a mutual friend. He had died from mixing a combination of drugs and alcohol causing him to collapse on the dance floor of a club and fall into a lethal coma. The reason he was always late was due to him being kicked off campus during week 1 for doing drugs for which he had to move to Leamington in his first year. His, was an ongoing drug problem, and he had been expelled from another university for it before coming to Warwick. This got me to thinking: In a more personalized environment could something more have been done to help him?

University helps us cope with the realities of the real world, where we have to reach out for help if we want it, and we must raise our voices to be heard and not fall into the anonymous crowd. Nevertheless, the death of a student going unacknowledged makes university life feel just too impersonal.