CRISIS RESPONSE — A TIMELINE OF EVENTS
This edited timeline reveals in real time the effort to find and help a classmate in crisis.
Saturday, March 24, 11:33 p.m. Professor Bill Owen emails students.
“Someone posted on reddit tonight about ending their life, they say they are one of your classmates. This is an awesome class, everyone is going to pass the course. The engineering you are capable of is amazing,” he writes.
Owen urges students to call campus police if they know the classmate, or if they need to talk to someone. He provides his contact and also contacts for campus police, counselling services, Grand River Hospital and suicide prevention hotlines.
The reddit post, profane and despairing, reveals the strain caused by a lengthy class project. It concludes: “I’ve cost my family too much money to fail out, I could never fly home to tell them I spent all my tuition money and didn’t graduate. So I’ve decided to end it all tonight, this is my goodbye from a shitty life of always being the worst at everything I tried.”
11:55 p.m. Students create a group Facebook chat to check on everybody and act. Connected by smartphones, drawing on clues in the post, they begin the hunt for their anonymous classmate. Up to 40 students post to the group chat.
11:57 p.m. A Google spreadsheet listing 76 students is created and shared through Facebook. Cells on the spreadsheet go green one after the other as classmates check in or someone speaks to them.
11:59 p.m. “If people are not responding, please go to their house,” a student writes.
Sunday, 12:03 a.m. “I will drive wherever if I know where to go,” a student offers. “i can drive to check up on people too,” another writes.
12:08 a.m. “i think if anyone is going to check on people, pls take someone with you,” a student writes.
12:19 a.m. “also I’m worried that just because someone says they are ok, it doesn’t mean they didn’t write that,” a student writes.
12:20 a.m. “if there is any worry about someone, just call the police,” a student writes.
12:21 a.m. “Already done,” another responds. “Campus police have been contacted,” another writes.
12:24 a.m. “also, 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,” a student posts.
12:26 a.m. Someone knocks on a door near the UW campus to check on a student.
By 12:27 a.m. Students figure they have contacted every classmate they can think of. They have not learned who wrote the reddit post.
12:29 a.m. “I just spoke with the campus police sergeant. He says at this point all they can do is wait for the person to contact them,” a student writes.
12:30 a.m. “well do you think the person just got over it and removed the post?” another asks.
12:31 a.m. “Is it possible we’ve incorrectly accounted for someone,” a student asks.
12:44 a.m. “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 posts. “and give them your support,” another student adds.
12:49 a.m. “Stress levels have been the highest I ever remember,” a student posts.
12:52 a.m. Engineering professor Bill Owen emails students again. “Can you all let me know that you are ok?” he asks. The response: yes.
12:59 a.m. A student writes: “A thought: now our entire class + more (staff, etc.) know about this issue. If I were the person, I wasn’t able to come forward with my issue privately to one person. Now, it would be even harder to come forward because almost 100 people would know my troubles.
“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.” Another student writes: “Hey guys, just a reminder, but let’s be very careful and sensitive in this search and what we say. This person may very well be in this current chat. We’ve played our role well and showed everyone on our class that we care about each other.” “For the person in question, it may be very personal to themselves and they do not want to be exposed. If we do identify the individual let’s remember to respect their confidentiality. That being said, let’s keep trying to reach out to everyone. And 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”
1:04 a.m. Crisis hotline numbers are shared online.
1:45 a.m. Students end their group chat.