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Lesson from a University

1.15.2009

We are a large, public university and we had a student who posted a message on Facebook indicating that she “didn’t want to be here” anymore. She then left her residence hall – disappearing for a day, not answering phone, etc. Her roommate told the RA, who reported it to our team via her supervisor. We had a lot of trouble tracking her down, and, in fact, only found her when she stopped back by the room to get some clothes. Turns out, she was with her old HS boyfriend for the weekend, and, “didn’t want to be here” was a reference to the school, not a suicidal ideation. All turned out well, but we learned a couple of things: 1) That the student (and subsequently her Mom) was actually glad we cared enough to go looking for her (once we explained what we were all about), and 2) she only left a landline as her “emergency contact”; which made tracking her Mom down difficult (who wants to leave a message about that?!?!). – we are rethinking the data we collect for emergency notifications, including cells and emails.

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