A Personal Request

[Jeff Zampieron]

It's been a while now, but I think I'll share a story also, just so people can start to see this isn't an isoloated problem.

I went to a co-ed prep school for high school. A school that considers themselves to be, like
most private schools, one of the finest educations
available anywhere. No one quite expected the
kind of life lesson we got one thursday night.

That afternoon I had seen the senior class president, a class mate and friend, joking around with friends in
the library after classes. I didn't think anything about it, as its a fairly normal thing to do.

That night around 7pm there were some police cars and an ambulance at one of the dorms. Most people
were rather confused, as this wasn't exactly a normal sighting around campus.
Well around 8:30 our house councellors (like an RA, but faculty) called everyone down to
the common rooms for a dorm meeting.

Our class president was dead, he had hung himself. The story goes that his roommate found him hanging in a back stairwell of the dorm.
The event actually made the regional newspaper, I still have the article, almost 4 years later.

It was so incredibly tragic that the entire campus was paralized. Classes were canceled for the rest of the quarter. The Head of School, to this day, is still haunted by it.

The terribly tragic thing is, that had someone been there for him at the time he decided to do this horrible thing, it probably won't have happened.

No one knows why a popular kid, class president,
going off to an Ivy league college would do such a thing. No note, no warning.

C is right. Don't worry about being a snitch, the life you possibly save is worth far more than just about anything else.

Just for consideration: Girls attempt suicide far more often than boys. But the boys who attempt, more often succeed.

My Condolences, C.