Moving On Too Fast: Handling Suicide

, by Aviva Markowitz,

I did not know Nora Miller. Yet despite this fact, this past week has been extremely difficult for me to concentrate on work I feel like I have been more personally affected by her death than Johanna’s two years ago. Suicide feels more personal than murder and although no student was also placed at risk by her death, it should make us all take a step back at our lives and our friends and think about what could’ve caused a person to take such a drastic step. When we first found out about Nora, there was little information dispersed. Over the course of the day, more information was leaked until we had a pretty good understanding of what had happened before the University was able to tell us her name.

Is suicide embarrassing for a university? Probably. But this does not mean that we should be so quick to move on from her death. After a brief email from President Roth and a moment of silence Tuesday night for those in mourning, it has been like the entire campus has moved on already. Classes have not stopped, homework has not been postponed, drop/add week has continued. The student body deserves a collective day of rest to be able to process what has happened and think about how we are all personally dealing with Nora’s death.. Instead, we have been forced to move on quickly and try to process things in the midst of all of our work. Is a suicide really so different from a murder that we are not able to all pause collectively for a day and reflect on Nora’s life and final choice?

Self-immolation is not a quiet act of suicide; it is clearly an intentional statement. I understand that the University had to respect the parent’s wishes to keep details about Nora and her death private, but when a suicide occurs in such a public way on campus property, it is the student body’s right to be able to mourn publically and to be given time to process and think about what has happened.

  • Alumna 2010

    I agree. Thank you for this. I’m an alumnus, and I only just heard about this tragedy, but I was astounded to see that life seems to be going as usual for the campus. When the tragedy of Johanna’s death happened, every Facebook status I saw from Wesleyan students and alumni were changed, stopped for at least a week. I understand that this incident doesn’t carry the same fear, and that students are in the hectic, class-adding part of the school year, but exceptions need to be made. The day after Johanna was killed, when we were still on lock-down, I drove home to New York. I spent the car ride home sobbing. It was not until I was able to pause from the other stresses that I could properly grieve and understand what had happened. While it sometimes seems easier to bottle up painful feelings, it would be healthier to face them as a school community. Particularly in the case of suicide, as many suicides are the result of too many painful emotions brewing inside without a way to release them.

    I hope the University will decide to give the students a much-needed day or two, even if it means some reworking of the academic calendar for the semester. It will give all the students a chance to properly assess their own emotional state and, as President Roth encourages, “be more mindful… of those who are suffering around us.”

  • Sherryl

    I agree as well…I just went onto the Wesleyan website to see if any updates had been posted on this, and all info/news about Nora had been removed from the home page!

    this is a deeply disturbing incident, I can only imagine how the students are feeling…It is such a tragic and intentional death, the campus needs time to grieve and come together..

  • Alumna 2008

    This is a very important sentiment. It is too, too easy for students to push feelings away amid the stress of a beginning semester, but some will crack later when it all comes bubbling up. A day off or a more exhaustive ceremony would provide the catharsis necessary for students to move on.

    Also, while Nora’s parents do deserve their privacy, it is so true that the mystery shrouding this incident makes it that much harder to process. It seems like she didn’t even have a history of depression, and so many of us are confounded as to how the determination that the death was a suicide was even reached.

    I speak for many of my fellow alumni when I say that the Wesleyan campus, student body, faculty, and administration are in our thoughts and hearts and we are sending all our love.

  • Alumna 2010

    I agree, and I understand that things might be made less public for the sake of her parents, who must be having a hard enough time coping with this without having to see reminders everywhere. My heart goes out to them. But it is also important to give her friends and classmates what they need to cope as well.

    The most chilling thing was the Facebook status posted on her profile only hours before… ““when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.” I suppose that’s why they have determined it a suicide, but I do think if the students knew more details about what happened, closure might be easier to achieve.

  • johnwesley

    According to newspaper accounts, Nora was a member of the Class of 2006 at Middletown High which should have put her on track for college graduation last spring. She spent some of that time at Stanford where she performed ably on their nationally ranked women’s track and field team. But, obviously she spent a gap year, or two somewhere else. As tempting as it may be to entertain the hope, even briefly, that those months away from school somehow hold the key to everything that happened, it is just as likely that nothing ever will fully explain it.

  • Jess

    Nora was a close family friend. She was one of my brothers closest friends and it hurts beyond words to see my family with broken hearts. Together they shared vacations, road trips, double dates, and an overall closeness. She was beauty, grace, laughter and talent, among so many other attributes. Nobody will ever know her logic. Depression, psychosis, guilt, fear, pressure or even protest…we will never know, 100%, why this happened. No matter how many questions we ask, or how much time we spend thinking, we just can’t know. I think that all we can do is watch our loved ones closely. A song lyric, a saying; generally we are too quick to say…”she’ll be fine” or “he’s just been a little depressed lately.” We really need to take a closer look at the way we look out for one another. Ask questions. To Nora’s family, I am so sorry.

  • Anon

    A year has past, yet there are still no answers. Why?

    • nora suffered from a brutal eating disorder for a long time

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