BEIJING — I'll never know why she did it. Why a brilliant student, who
beat out thousands of fellow Chinese to a secure a spot in the
country's top university, jumped off Building 36 to her death.
I know little of the incident, only what I reported in the paragraph
above. The same goes with my classmates, both at the language school
and those matriculated and taking regular university courses. Yet the
student community here has been talking about the incident for the
past week.
These conversations start with the terrible news, but soon move on.
Someone says that it's a terrible thing, everyone quickly agrees, and
then segues into speculation as to what caused the death. Stress from
school work is by far the most popular answer. We foreign students
can't quite grasp how the regular Tsinghua students can keep such
punishing schedules – we've heard about their all-night study sessions
and weeks at a time on two hours of sleep at night – while living four
to a room in buildings with no showers and intermittent electricity.
Perhaps it was something else – something back at home with the
family, relationship woes – that caused the terrible events of last
week. We'll never know.
The university has nothing about the incident. There's been no e-mail,
posters or attempts to distribute materials during class. No public
memorial or guest-book to sign. Nothing – just endless rumors flying
around the corridors. This is, of course, an extremely sensitive
matter, and I respect the privacy of the person's family and friends,
but the lack of any notification makes things worse. Instead of
releasing a simple statement clarifying what happened, the school
leaves it up to the rumor mill. A simple notice would end most of this
talk, and allow people to move on to a more productive state of
mourning – remembering, or perhaps hearing for the first time, about
the good this person did, and discussing how to prevent future
suicides.
My senior year at Tufts one of my class' brightest students, a young
woman from Bulgaria, was killed in a traffic accident during
Thanksgiving Break. I didn't know her, but I still vividly remember
the school paper's 2,500 word obituary (written by a friend) that
traced her incredible origins in Sofia to her works of charity and
activism on campus. There was a large, well-attended public memorial
later in the term. The campus came together in the days after this
tragedy, and it felt as if the community grew because of it.
A few days after the death of a woman, another person committed
suicide at People's University on the other side of the city. Again I
heard scattered comments, most lamenting how terrible it was that
another young person would die so soon. And being sad was about the
only thing there was to do, because the silent administration let the
bulletin board comments stand as the only voice about the tragedy. I
hope in the future they can do better.
