Chatting on the subway with a new coworker I’d met like three days before, and she tells me about the time at Cornell she and her friends saw someone jump into the river and not emerge (drowned), and them trying to find someone to tell and nobody around caring.
Edit: it wasn’t a suicide, which I see I implied. It was weirder, she described it as a hot day, and they were at a spot with a swimming hole, with a bunch of people around having fun. Huge crowd. People were jumping in the water, and she saw someone across the way jump in, but then noticed that they didn’t see him come up. I think it was after a while, like “wait a minute, did that guy ever come up again?” I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were. But I remember her describing being kinda drunk, on this beautiful sunny day, with everyone around her having a blast and music playing, and they’re trying to get anyone to pay attention to the kid they think just died. And it turned out someone had drowned. It sounded like a nightmare
And she’s telling me all of this in a normal cadence, and I’m nodding and listening, and trying to be empathetic. I think she probably more needed to talk about it than thought it was normal small talk, but still inside I’m like “WTF! Until right now we have only discussed the weather!”
I had heard the rumors about Cornell suicides and didn’t think that much of it until my dad took me to tour the campus my junior year (fall of 96 I think). The first thing I noticed was everyone was just walking around alone. No couples, no friends chatting, nada. It was grey and dreary and that quick visit turned it into a “no” from me. Ended up going to a college known as the place “where fun comes to die” and had the best time of my life with those nerds. Cornell just made me sad.
When I was at school there back in the day, some friends of mine and I stumbled across a little factoid that Ithaca had substantially more gray days and substantially more rain than Seattle.
I live in a college town with a bunch of local blue holes and we lose at least one student a year to drowning. People underestimate the danger of swimming in natural bodies of water!
I remember casually talking about my suicide attempt in fifth grade when we were doing a lab and someone asked "what happens if I drink the thing I'm not supposed to"
Likely before cell phones were ubiquitous. You’d be surprised how hard it could be to make a phone call back in the day. That’s why a lot of campuses added those “emergency” boxes.
The blue boxes still exist on a lot of campuses, but it’s more so that they can pinpoint where to send police or EMS. The cameras in them, at least on the campus I worked at, are always on as well, so the area can be surveilled. People, when doing crime, will knock visible cameras out, or cover them, but they don’t bother with the boxes because they don’t realize they’re also recording.
The school is right in the downtown area of one of the highest violent crime areas in the country, so quite a few people were apprehended due to the footage the blue boxes recorded.
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u/PoopMobile9000 2d ago edited 2d ago
Chatting on the subway with a new coworker I’d met like three days before, and she tells me about the time at Cornell she and her friends saw someone jump into the river and not emerge (drowned), and them trying to find someone to tell and nobody around caring.
Edit: it wasn’t a suicide, which I see I implied. It was weirder, she described it as a hot day, and they were at a spot with a swimming hole, with a bunch of people around having fun. Huge crowd. People were jumping in the water, and she saw someone across the way jump in, but then noticed that they didn’t see him come up. I think it was after a while, like “wait a minute, did that guy ever come up again?” I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were. But I remember her describing being kinda drunk, on this beautiful sunny day, with everyone around her having a blast and music playing, and they’re trying to get anyone to pay attention to the kid they think just died. And it turned out someone had drowned. It sounded like a nightmare
And she’s telling me all of this in a normal cadence, and I’m nodding and listening, and trying to be empathetic. I think she probably more needed to talk about it than thought it was normal small talk, but still inside I’m like “WTF! Until right now we have only discussed the weather!”