Cornell gorge suicides

Cornell's Thurston Avenue Bridge in 2009

The Cornell gorge suicides were a phenomenon of suicides at Cornell University in the 1970s, the 1990s and during the 2009/2010 school year, with the suicide method being jumping from the bridges into the gorges.

History

According to an investigation by Cornell alumnus Rob Fishman in The Huffington Post, multiple suicides occurred in the 1970s and 1990s. In "May of 1979, the university approved plans to add six-and-a-half foot metal bars to the already three-foot walls over the Collegetown Bridge." In "1994, ...a fifth student died in the gorges in the span of three years."

Cornell posted "security guards on all of the bridges that cross Cornell's gorges, and extended the hours of several" campus counselling lines." The half-dozen suicides in the 2009–2010 academic year marked the first instances of student suicides at Cornell since 2005. Stepped-up efforts to help students with mental health issues that began in 2002 and intensified after David J. Skorton became Cornell's president in 2007 are "at least anecdotally ... helping people," said Simeon Moss, a university spokesman. " New "fences were erected after the 2010 suicides." "Cornell University...plans to begin installing nets on... five bridges" which will extend out 15 feet. Installation of the nets began in May 2013 and were completed over the summer. Between 1990 and 2010, 27 people, including fifteen Cornell students as well as others, had killed themselves from bridge jumping in Ithaca.

The first survivor off of the infamous Thurston Avenue bridge from main campus toward North Campus (near the architecture buildings) was on the night of October 21, 1991. The next day, The Cornell Daily Sun named the student: Derek McCarthy. "Police investigators said McCarthy is the first person known to have survived the 125-foot plunge to the bottom of the gorge from that particular bridge." Having recovered sufficiently from his injuries, Derek McCarthy returned to Cornell in May 1992 and completed his undergraduate degree in December 1992.

Despite these deaths, university officials have "long been quick to assert, don't mean that suicides are more common at Cornell than at other colleges." According to The Huffington Post, statistically when compared to other colleges, Cornell does not have an above-average suicide rate. The misperception of a high suicide rate was attributed to the public nature of suicides in the gorges, as well as unconnected gorge suicides which are often assumed to be linked to Cornell students or faculty.