In Loco Parentis

Last week, Chaplain Jewelnel Davis hosted a common meal at which attendees faced two great tasks: to account for the rash of student deaths on Columbia's campus in the past two years, and to determine what the University can do to prevent more deaths in the future.

These were admittedly difficult tasks. But finding easy answers wasn't the point of the gathering. Instead, the somber soiree acted as a forum for a conversation that Columbia has had with itself over the last few years.

That such a forum exists at all is a welcome change. Two years ago, one would have had little chance of exacting a clear response from the administration on any number of matters, much less the taboo topics of suicide and murder.

But now committees have been set up to examine the problem of student death on Columbia's campus; Spectator devotes both news and opinion pieces to the issue; Residence Life emphasizes Counseling & Psychological Services while promoting awareness of mental health through study breaks and free pizza.

That's all well and good. But the question remains: will it change anything?

Probably not, because the above initiatives are all rational attempts to grapple with an irrational problem. Suicide defies reason. That is, after all, why it so disturbs us in the first place.

For 10,000 years suicide was treated as a spiritual crisis, not a biochemical one. Those at risk understood their malady to be a sickness of the soul, and their loved ones treated their body, mind, and spirit alike.

Our age, however, treats all phenomena as the result of either quanta zigzagging through time and space, the operations of a schismatic and alien psyche, the dialectical processes of history, or random combinations of nucleic acid.

In other words, when one arrives on a college campus, one is effectively estranged not only from home, but also from God, from one's fellow man, and from tradition.

It makes sense, then, that the administration seeks to correct this estrangement by housing all first-years on the South Lawn campus. Such an arrangement promotes community and facilitates interaction between deans in the First Year Class Center, deans in Residential Life, core professors teaching in Hamilton, first-year resident advisers, and the new students themselves.

But what of the other three years? As my colleague Mike Ricci has often pointed out, first-years living on South Lawn aren't killing themselves. Those most at risk, it seems, live off the main campus, in isolated dorms like East Campus and McBain.

These environments do not foster constant interaction between deans and students. The Sophomore Class Center, for instance, is in Furnald, but only a scant number of sophomores live in Furnald. The others, who often live blocks away from Furnald, must rely on e-mails or initiative to seek guidance and direction.

For all intents and purposes, one is alone upon leaving the sequestered shell of South Lawn. Not alone in the sense that one has no friends, but alone in that one is not constantly supervised by a higher authority, someone to turn to for order.

"Before a person can live tolerably with himself or with others," wrote Russell Kirk, "he must know order. If we lack order in the soul and order in society, we dwell 'in a land of darkness, as darkness itself,' the book of Job puts it; 'and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where light is as darkness.'"

On other Ivy League campuses like Princeton, students are at all times under the protective bubble of the university. It shelters them, feeds them, counsels them, advises them, treats them when they are ill, and, of course, instructs them. Their lives contain some degree of order.

At Columbia, one can only say with reasonable assurance that a student is, at least, instructed by the University. Food is another story; those without ready access to John Jay don't often make the trek for dinner. Advising is practically non-existent. And when students are ill, they are more often than not directed to an outside institution--St. Luke's--for assistance.

Disorder reigns. In fact, as New Yorkers, Columbians take this as matter-of-factly as possible; some even take pride in it. When one participant in the common meal suggested that the University should no longer hesitate to act in loco parentis and involve itself in the private lives of its students, some reacted warily.

But without knowledge of an abiding presence and existence within an established order, the undergraduate lives, like Job, "in the shadow of death ... where light is darkness."

The restoration of order should be the top priority of the current administration, as well as the next. An infirmary less dependent on St. Luke's would be a good start. Undergraduate colleges and variations of the Living and Learning Center could follow. Such initiatives should strive for the establishment of a regulated liberty amongst the student body. Liberty to be oneself, but regulated to prevent harm, preserve order, and nourish the soul.

The alternative: more common meals at which the participants dine on ashes. And those are bitter meals indeed.

Matt Continetti is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.