GoGo Maine News Update!Follow

To be fair, he probably wasn't the brightest bulb. I mean, he set himself on fire, but only suffered burns to 60% of his body. Weak.

I remember in 1991 (?), on the commons of Amherst college, someone immolated themselves in protest of Gulf I. My friends and I were downtown when this happened and it was chilling. People spoke about Buddhist monks doing it during the Vietnam war. This guy though was decidedly not a monk.

I'm not sure why he did it but let me say, my brother is schizophrenic and he's not crazy enough to burn himself to death.

edited to say: Oh the student is originally from CT. CT sucks *** in every way.

Here is the article about the guy.

Edited, May 22nd 2008 3:00pm by Annabella

Man, what happened to the good old days of swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills after a long night of drinking?

Nexa

Oh, she did that too, and cut herself on multiple prior occasions as well. Her parents filed a $27 million wrongful-death lawsuit against MIT claiming that the school knew about her problems and didn't do enough to help her, and it ended up being settled for an undisclosed (presumably high) amount.


The holidays don't seem to be doing the trick; I heard that there have been at least 3 suicides at MIT in this academic year alone, a marked increase from previous years. The professors don't lessen total workload because of these "suicide prevention" holidays; instead the students just have a higher concentration of problem sets due on Tuesdays which means more Monday all-nighters.

Christ, that's bad and suicides in a community can often infect others who do the same. Talking and knowing people who live and work at MIT, you realize that genius and madness are more related than you think. Or at least the perfectionism that is usually obligatory to get into a school like that is something akin to insanity.

It's hard to tell what does it. My town (Somerville, MA) had a rash of high school suicides and the demographics aren't that different than surrounding communities (like Medford, for example) that don't have any especially high incidents of suicide, so I imagine that the contagion effect is really powerful. It's like that in families-- people are seen at higher risk if they have had a family member.

But you know, in the end, the biggest trouble is that we in mental health have no reliable measure about the risk of suicide, since other suicidal behaviors doesn't necessarily mean sh*t in terms of those who are actually successful at it. It's the same way with homicide. I remember when my first client committed suicide while i treated him-- there are actually not many cases I've had of that happening but it makes you realize how helpless you really are as a mental health professional to help someone hellbent on annihilation.



Edited, May 22nd 2008 7:28pm by Annabella

That or the Utne Reader doesn't care about Somerville anymore.

It's funny cause it's true.

I had a trolley load of Maine tourist for my first tour on Monday. They laughed in the right places and tipped well. I threw in a few Ayuh's, to make them feel more at home.

I bet it's them midwesterner's that can't seem to get the timing down on teh 'laughs'.

Yeah, I think Somerville is a bit less pricey, as long as you stay out of Davis. Your estimations, though, are a bit off. But still, I have a two bedroom at 1500 w/o anything including and it's a bargain-- it's actually not bad when you live with someone else.. But it is bigger and I have a backyard and a basement. I would never live in a studio, period. Nothing personal, it just would be hard to live in one room. I'd rather travel further--like if I didn't live in Somerville, I'd move to Watertown.

And you'd never find a 700 dollar studio in Somerville--it'd be at least 900, iirc.



Edited, May 23rd 2008 4:49pm by Annabella

Ya, I was kinda referring "from the high end". Boston Studios going for around $1100-$1300, Cambridge/Allston around $1100, Somerville/JP/Roxbury $900.

I looked at a place near Davis for $850 though. Didn't like having shared bathrooms, as I'm prone to roost with stacks of comics if I'm not eating enough ruffage.