Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Growing epidemic

The students were all gossiping about another suicide yesterday. This is the third known suicide this school year. Tsinghua averages around four to six each year. Most are commited by women. My students tell me that the rate was much higher ten years ago when the academic requirements were more stringent -- arguing that there's a correlation between school pressure and suicide rate. Of course all of this word-of-mouth information is a bit sketchy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

so it is the MIT of China--my nephew said that MIT peppers random days off throughout the year. Students call them "suicide prevention days." We just ditched class at CSUN.