Court Gives Guidance on Colleges’ Responsibility to Prevent Suicide

Massachusetts’ highest court gave colleges and universities some guidance on Monday about their responsibilities on a complex and delicate issue: suicide prevention.

The Supreme Judicial Court agreed with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that it was not responsible for the death of a 25-year-old graduate student who killed himself by jumping off a campus building in 2009. The student’s father had sued the university, an administrator, and two faculty members, asserting they should have known that his son, Han Nguyen, was at risk.

“Until today we haven’t had really complex decisions come down from a lot of high state courts on the specific issue of suicide responsibility in colleges,” said Peter F. Lake, a professor of higher-education law at Stetson University. “In some ways this is the first major case.”

Lake said MIT had won the case because university officials had done what the court thought was reasonable, given the circumstances. The unanimous decision does not apply outside Massachusetts, although other courts are likely to consider the ruling if they face similar cases. Still, the decision does not mean that colleges and universities should rest easily. The Massachusetts judges made it clear that colleges do have a responsibility to do what they can to prevent suicide on their campuses.

“MIT won the case, but the message to colleges is, you can’t simply look away,” Lake said. “You will have some responsibility.”

In their decision, the judges said that while universities do not have the same high degree of responsibility to students as jails or hospitals do to prisoners or patients, for example, they have a closer relationship to a student than to a passing stranger. They operate sports teams and other activities that might be considered dangerous, and they touch almost all aspects of students’ lives when they are on campus.

“Universities are clearly not bystanders or strangers in regards to their students,” the decision says. “But universities are not responsible for monitoring and controlling all aspects of their students’ lives.”

Daniel S. Medwed, a professor at Northeastern University’s School of Law, said the decision “gives a little bit of guidance in an area that’s very gray.” It says that there are circumstances in which university officials should take action, and it outlines broadly what that action should be.

The judges said that universities must respond when they have “actual knowledge of a student’s suicide attempt that occurred while enrolled at the university or recently before matriculation.” They must also take action if they know about “a student’s stated plans or intentions to commit suicide.”

Taking action could mean initiating a suicide-prevention protocol, if one exists, the judges said. It could also mean alerting officials who are “empowered to assist the student” or, if the student refuses care, notifying the student’s emergency contact.

The decision “balances privacy concerns with student health and suicide-prevention concerns,” Medwed said. The judges also took into consideration that the MIT student was 25 and lived off campus.

This is one of a few court decisions this year that will help shape universities’ understanding of their role in student safety, Lake said. In March, California’s highest court ruled that public colleges “must protect their students from foreseeable violence” in a decision that allowed a woman who had been stabbed by a classmate at the University of California at Los Angeles to sue the institution.

“If you put them side to side with each other, they say a lot of the same things,” Lake said of the cases in Massachusetts and California. Though neither MIT nor UCLA was found responsible, he said, higher education in general is “in an age of enhanced accountability.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.