Columbia Professors: Student Suicides Increase Because Of Trump

Two professors at Columbia University recently penned a letter to the university president saying that faculty and students are “chronically and deeply depressed” over Donald Trump's election and his election is the cause of the recent rise in student suicides.

Really. They said that.

“We know no one at Columbia who is not upset, chronically and deeply, since the election. We know this is true of the administration,” professors Robert Pollack and Letty Moss-Salentijn wrote. “We know this true of the students, and the cluster of suicides this month can have no other meaning."

“But what of ourselves, and what of our colleagues; that is, what of the faculty? So, Mr. President, we are asking you how we, the faculty, may embody what the university values, with a sense of full obligation and with the assurance of full recognition.

Faculty do not have places, times, or administrative permission to acknowledge our own fears to each other,” the letter laments, noting that “venues for such quiet, difficult conversations are very hard to find on our campus.”

The letter goes on...

“Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451 comes close to where we are today. In this vision of the near future, firemen and state agents are ordered to set fires, ordered to burn remaining caches of hidden books wherever they are found.”

I can't help but wonder if they understand the irony of what that last paragraph says...?

Here's my letter to the damaged professors and their depressed student body.

Dear “Depressed,”

I can't help but wonder if at some point in your lives you were told that you should never have to be disappointed and you will always get your way.

That seems to be the only valid explanation for your “chronic and deep” depression over the recent Presidential election. And while the learned professors have no real evidence to support their claim of increased student suicides because of Trump's election, if their claim is true it means your parents and your teachers have failed you.

They have failed to teach you that life is always going to have setbacks and disappointments and that you simply overcome them and move on.

They have failed to teach you that you have absolutely no right to not be disappointed, offended, hurt, or ridiculed.

They have failed to teach you that you cannot and will not be protected from life. Sometimes life is great. Sometimes it sucks but then it gets better. Apparently you didn't learn that.

They have failed to teach you that taking your own life is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

In other words, they have failed to teach you to be adults, ready for the real world.
The real world doesn't have safe spaces to protect your precious feelings. The real world doesn't offer you free counseling, hot chocolate, crayons and puppies when you're disappointed and your feelings get hurt. Honestly – the real world doesn't care. We expect you to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and forge ahead.

Life doesn't stop because you're unhappy.

The real world doesn't play a scoreless game lest one side feel badly about themselves. The real world doesn't hand out participation trophies. You're either going to win or lose – the choice is yours. But nobody (except perhaps the government) is going to hand you everything you want just so you don't feel badly about yourselves.

It' real life. Get over it and grow up.

Sincerely,

Grownups everywhere