After the deaths of Alexander Rickabaugh and Kaila Brown Sept. 21, the University has reached out to those potentially affected by the tragedy while deferring a campus-wide discussion of the issues surrounding those events.
Many elements of the student life team—including Counseling and Psychological Services and DukeReach—have sought to inform students about the availability of their services. These organizations have also worked to identify individual students who may have been affected by the deaths and offer them ongoing support. So far, however, the University has decided against translating this support into a campus-wide opportunity to discuss psychological issues affecting students, despite lingering concerns about the ability to effectively reach students who may be in need of psychological resources. A cause of death has not yet been announced for either Brown or Rickabaugh, though foul play has been ruled out in both cases.
“When we have an incident on campus…we try to identify which students might be affected by that particular incident and we try to figure out how to best reach out to those students and offer them support,” Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said.
The University reaches out
Following the loss of Brown—a fifth-year graduate student in English—and Rickabaugh—a sophomore in the Pratt School of Engineering—the University has identified students who may be affected through a wide ranging network which includes student wellness organizations, University staff, fellow students and other community members. Although wellness staff has been careful to avoid intruding unnecessarily into the lives of students, they have reached out to individuals who may have been affected by the deaths of Brown and Rickabaugh, Wasiolek said.
“People observe and notice different things about students in different aspects of their experience here at Duke,” Wasiolek said. “Unless folks are communicating with each other and staying connected with each other, then we’re really not in the best position to truly support students in the way that we could and we should.”
Student wellness organizations have also tried to create environments where students can help each other and community members can seek help for students who may be in distress. CAPS has held several events throughout the past several weeks with mental health professionals on hand to help students. More than 100 people attended a memorial event held by CAPS in Kilgo Quad immediately following the announcements of the losses.
“We just created a space,” CAPS Director of Outreach Gary Glass said. “We’re delivering a message to students that you should allow yourself to be impacted by this, giving a little bit of education of normal reaction to something like this, and of course letting them know about all the resources.”
DukeReach, which provides a way for community members to identify students who are in distress and have professionals reach out to them, has also increased awareness of its services in response to the tragedy.
Despite the impact of the deaths and the ongoing outreach efforts, neither CAPS nor DukeReach has seen an uptick in caseload beyond what might normally occur during midterm weeks.
“Right now, before midterms, is always the time of year that we can naturally see an uptick in services and outreach,” Director of DukeReach Amy Powell said. “Students have a lot of stress around this time of year.”
A deferred conversation
Although student wellness organizations will continue outreach efforts through fall break, the University has so far decided against a broader response to the deaths of Rickabaugh and Brown, Wasiolek said. This decision may change in the future, but there is no current plan to encourage a campus-wide discussion of grieving, mental health or psychological resources in the wake of the recent tragedies.
“It’s yet to be determined exactly whether will be some kind of broader conversation,” Wasiolek said. “From our standpoint, we’re doing this work on a daily basis.”
Other than an initial email announcing the deaths to the undergraduate and graduate student bodies, the University has refrained from discussing the incidents through campus-wide communication channels or events. Instead, Duke has opted for a more targeted approach, with wellness organizations reaching out to specific students.
“We’ve just continued to communicate to folks that we’re here,” Wasiolek explained. “I don’t think that this has involved a mass communication to the whole campus. I think that it’s been more of a grassroots kind of effort.”
Administrators have deferred comment on the details of the deaths until the release of the medical examiner's reports, which are currently pending. In North Carolina, county medical examiners have up to 14 days to create a report and send it to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to the administrative code of the N.C. OCME. The report then undergoes processing by the OCME, which can take days or weeks.
Lingering concerns
Student wellness organizations do, however, remain concerned about the lack of awareness and communication with regards to mental health awareness on campus—as a reaction to grieving the deaths of Brown and Rickabaugh, but also more generally among the student body.
Glass and CAPS Director Wanda Collins noted that they continue to work on increasing the emotional openness of Duke students and reducing the stigma surrounding vulnerability.
“There’s a level of containment. The anxiety is very contained. If someone is struggling, my impression is that they’re less likely to seem emotionally distraught in a visible way than you might see on other campuses,” Collins said.
This makes identifying students who may be in distress increasingly difficult, even for close friends or University staff that a student may regularly interact with. This is especially true given that University officials have to strike a balance between ensuring student wellness and becoming an intrusion into the lives of individual students.
“The warning signs are invisible on a campus of highly competitive people who always feel like they need to have it together, and that’s a challenge,” Glass said. “When you’re in an environment that’s highly competitive, strength gets defined very narrowly and the taboo on struggle is greater.”
Glass explained that he sometimes sees students who have come to CAPS for help with depression, anxiety or self-harm issues but appear to be completely composed on the outside.
“They look like they’re ready to give a job interview,” Glass said. “Even when they're in pain, they remain very impressive.”
With the deaths of Rickabaugh and Brown, these concerns have become even more acute for student life staff members and the mental health professionals at CAPS. Glass said that the University could do more to address the broader issues of mental health within the Duke community and the questions that have been raised following the two student deaths.
“The general culprit in so many if not most Duke students’ struggles is how hard it is for them to deal with unpredictability and uncertainty,” Glass said. “I think that [we should] as an educational institution help students learn to manage the emotional impact of that even before a tragedy happens.”
Wasiolek agreed that the recent deaths may raise questions about the campus environment that need to be answered.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.