Trigger Warning: Suicide
Like any good student at St. Lawrence University, I try my best to do my homework on time. Unfortunately, on one such day, I was encountered with an assignment I couldn’t finish. A reading for one of my humanities classes. Usually, the problem with these readings is that they are long, dense, and on perusall. While all these were true, that was not the dilemma I was facing. The topic of the week was Death which is a common topic for any class. However, this article, by Albert Camus, was not just about death, but rather more specifically about suicide.
The St. Lawrence community is one of the last groups who needs reminders about the seriousness of mental health and suicide prevention. Despite the flaws that SLU has, I truly believe that most members of this campus genuinely care about the wellbeing of their fellow students. However, I am not here to laud over the step towards better counseling services, but rather highlight how there is still progress to be made.
I don’t want to recount the article exactly here as I already have enough homework as it is, but I will give you a summary of the problem that I had with it. The article starts by suggesting that life is absurd and meaningless if there is no God and if you don’t believe in a God then there is no reason not to kill yourself. While Camus does go on later to say that humans should not end their life as the most fulfilling thing one can do is embrace the absurdity and continue to live, I did not get that far. Instead, after reading the first page, I laid down in my bed and cried.
I have struggled with my mental health since I was young. Everyone has their setbacks in life and mine just happens to be a chronic illness. Hearing about suicide is hard, whether you have dealt with those thoughts before or not, but to be presented with a list of reasons of why life is not worth living is painful. It would have only taken a minute of class to warn students about the start of the article and how the conclusion of it is ultimately positive, but instead an oversight was made at the cost of some students’ mental health and about 20 minutes of a counseling appointment.
This is not the only class that has been given troubling content to read with a proper content warning. In fact, the specific article I was assigned to read had been given to a friend of mine for her class and, you guessed it, she also did not receive any sort of warning about the content. I know these cases are not isolated. Certain professors at this university are not always as considerate as they should be when discussing identities and experiences outside of their own. Students must face discussions and stereotypes in the classroom regarding their race, gender, and sexuality all the time. To see violence against those groups or suggesting that certain members of these groups are destined to be sad or dead or both is a troubling experience to have at 8:50 on a Tuesday morning.
This is not to say that all professors are heartless monsters who don’t care about their students. I believe the opposite is true in most cases. Even in my situation, I was able to email the professor and be excused from the reading for that week, which, while it should be common courtesy, is not always an option given.
St. Lawrence has made steps forward since I first arrived. Not only is the health center always trying to have more counselors to talk to students, but the campus in general has shifted to have a bigger focus on mental health. While there are some things that turn out more successful than others, it’s better to be two steps forward one step back than to be static. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go, both inside and outside the classroom.