The Sunday Read: 'The Unthinkable Mental Health Crisis That Rocked a New England College'

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The first death occurred before the academic year started. In July 2021, a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute was reported dead. The administration sent an email notice, with the familiar, thoroughly vetted wording and added resources. Katherine Foo, an assistant professor in the department of integrative and global studies, felt especially crushed by the news. She taught this student. He was Chinese and she felt connected to the specific pressures he faced. She read through old, anonymous course evaluations, looking for signs she might have missed. But she wasn't sure where to place her personal feelings about loss in this professional context.

The week before the academic year started, a second student died. A rising senior in the computer science department who loved horticulture took his own life. This brought with it a sign of disaster. The suicide of one student is a tragedy; two could be the start of a cluster. Some faculty members began to feel a tinge of fear as they entered campus.

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts is a tidy New England college campus, with the saturated landscaping typical of well-funded institutions. The hedges are beautifully pruned, the paths are swept clean. Red brick buildings from the 19th century fraternize with tall glass facades and renovated interiors. But in a six-month period, the school was turned upside down by a wave of suicides.

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Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan.