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The front-page story in today\u2019s paper: \u00a0\u201cNaperville teen\u2019s senseless tragedy: \u2018They scared him to death\u2019<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0It reports on a Naperville teenager,\u00a0Corey Walgren, who committed suicide after being confronted by a school official and a police officer over a recording he made, and reportedly shared with others, of a sexual encounter \u2014 the girl on the recording had made the complaint, and, as it happened, the video was not viewable, so that it was, functionally, an audio recording only (whether she knew that or not is unknown).<\/p>\n The article contains, by and large, the usual rose-tinted profile \u2014 he had never been in \u201cserious\u201d trouble before, he was notable for playing hockey without penalties, he was on the honor roll, he had a group of tight-knit friends, and so on. \u00a0Then the article details the police visit \u2014 he was pulled into an office during lunch at school, the school dean and the officer asked to look at his phone\u00a0and found the video in question, they talked to him for 18 minutes, then called his parents and discussed the matter with his mother by phone (she was at work), at which point the officer suggested the matter might be handled by a \u201cstation adjustment\u201d \u2013 that is, an informal agreement to do community service or the like rather than going through the formal juvenile system. \u00a0The boy was then escorted to an office waiting area to wait for his mom to leave work and come to the school to sign some paperwork, but he walked away, and was finally found after he jumped off the top of a parking garage.<\/p>\n Doug and Maureen Walgren plan to file a lawsuit against both the school district and the police department. They hope legal action will spur the school and police to rethink how they handle future incidents involving minors.<\/p>\n \u201cThere has to be a change in their policy and their procedures,\u201d Maureen Walgren said. \u201cCorey\u2019s death cannot go by with no meaning at all.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What exactly is their complaint? \u00a0What do they think the school district and police department did wrong? \u00a0The article says that the police failed to contact the parents soon enough \u2014 that various legal \u201cguidelines\u201d state that unless the student is an immediate danger to others or immediate action is needed to prevent destruction of others, the parents should be contacted before the police has any contact with the student.<\/p>\n Would this have made a difference? \u00a0It seems to me that having a parent on the phone when being confronted by the police, or having to wait while mom leaves work, sitting, mind racing about the consequences, could have made it worse. \u00a0Or is the lawsuit claiming that the boy shouldn\u2019t have been able to walk away but should have been under close supervision? \u00a0Or that, indeed, they should have never pursued the matter in the first place? \u00a0(There was a real girl that was harmed by his actions.)<\/p>\n This chain of events suggests to me, more than anything else, that the picture-perfect life the article portrays, was not truly the case. \u00a0Perhaps it is indeed the case that otherwise \u201cnormal\u201d kids, with no mental health issues or other problems with their lives, when confronted by something sudden that they don\u2019t know how to cope with, are in fact at risk of suicide (though I doubt that suicide-prevention is the objective of the \u201ccall the parents\u201d rule). \u00a0But it just seems unlikely \u2014 and, what\u2019s more, though I get that it\u2019s a coping mechanism, the notion of pursuing a lawsuit in order to have a suicide \u201cmean something\u201d doesn\u2019t sit well with me at all.<\/p>\n After all, it wasn\u2019t all that long ago that everyone was talking about the \u201c13 Reasons Why\u201d Netflix show \u2014 criticizing the implicit message that committing suicide can \u201caccomplish\u201d something, even if it\u2019s just exacting revenge on people who think have wronged you. \u00a0In fact, it\u2019s still in the news: \u00a0the New York Post<\/a>, for instance, reports on parents claiming that the story inspired their son to kill himself.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s something that shows up more that it should \u2013 the idea that a suicide can be meaningful. \u00a0There was a CNN report a while back that I blogged about<\/a>, in which a transgender teen committed suicide, with the seeming objective both to punish the parents and to bring about social change. \u00a0The Robin Williams case<\/a>, too, seemed to have a fair bit of reaction that he had a \u201cgood reason\u201d to kill himself. \u00a0And the suicide rate in the US is rising (though still not as high as in other countries \u2014 according to WHO<\/a>, we rank 48th) \u2014 remember that suicide outranks breast cancer<\/a> as a cause of \u201cpremature\u201d death.<\/p>\n Now, I know that causes of suicide are complex, and have to do with mental illness and also the increasing precariousness of working-class lives, but I worry that we\u2019ve lost the ability to say that suicide is simply wrong, and that this cultural \u201cbrake\u201d on suicide is gone and we\u2019re left trying to reason our way out of it.<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0from pixabay, https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/sling-hangman-hanging-knot-1222466\/<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The front-page story in today\u2019s paper: \u00a0\u201cNaperville teen\u2019s senseless tragedy: \u2018They scared him to death\u2019.\u201d \u00a0It reports on a Naperville teenager,\u00a0Corey Walgren, who committed suicide after being confronted by a school official and a police officer over a recording he made, and reportedly shared with others, of a sexual encounter \u2014 the girl on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":4871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102],"class_list":["post-6563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-suicide"],"yoast_head":"\n