‘Be there for each other tonight’
Dozens of university students rally for a classmate in crisis
WATERLOO — It was a suicide note, or maybe just the rant of a frustrated student, posted online under an alias.
“I’ve decided to end it all tonight, this is my goodbye”
Classmates saw the post as a cry for help from one of their own. They refused to stay on the sidelines.
Over two frenzied hours last weekend, dozens of University of Waterloo engineering students rallied to find and help a classmate in crisis.
Scattered across southern Ontario late on a Saturday night, they sprang into action, investigating, sharing and connecting online.
“even if we’ve checked everyone, i still think everyone should try to talk to their friends or people they know. that person might say they’re okay just because people asked. so try to talk to whoever is stressing out about everything”
Not knowing who posted their despair, students researched the possibilities, methodically and thoroughly as one would expect of future engineers. Because they understood.
“Stress levels have been the highest I ever remember”
The remarkable effort leaps from a Facebook group chat that students created to coordinate their response. More than 40 students posted to it.
Their posts show no haters. There’s sympathy and empathy, a desire to help.
“something we can definitely do is to be there for each other tonight, tomorrow night. sleep over with a buddy, etc. comfort like that, however little it may
be, can go a long way”
A student built a spreadsheet naming 76 classmates to share online. One by one, students reached out to every name on the list.
“If people are not responding, please go to their house”
They contacted friends and a brother. Someone called a mother who checked on her son. Someone knocked on a door to enlist roommates in the search.
“I will drive wherever if I know where to go.”
They shared crisis hotline numbers. They alerted campus police.
“Is it possible we’ve incorrectly accounted for someone”
Their intervention did not come without self-reflection. Were they really helping? Could they be making a bad situation worse, hunting for someone who did not want to be found and who might be embarrassed?
“Are we handling this the right way by having a class group chat actively looking for the person by name? Once the person is found, everyone will know who it is.”
Perhaps their troubled classmate had already joined in the group chat.
“if the person is present here, please know that we all care about you and you can always talk to us in privacy or however you choose to”
In the end, students never found their classmate in crisis. But they tried. The university reported no suicide.
“This is exactly the way we would want people to respond,” University of Waterloo spokesperson Matthew Grant said.
“It is our absolute wish, it is what we ask people to do, to reach out to that person, to let them know that they’re not alone, to direct them to available supports and services.”
UW is vowing to hire more counsellors to improve student mental health and reduce suicide. It plans to train more people how to reach out to others in despair.
“We want to make sure that people who might need help don’t feel any barrier whatsoever to reaching out for it,” Grant said.
The anguished post shows how students sometimes struggle in a demanding program. The response shows something more hopeful: the kids are all right.