Posted by Ampersand |
April 3rd, 2005
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April 3rd, 2005 at 4:37 pm
I’m missing the humor in “After Suicides, N.Y.U. Will Limit Access to Balconies.” Describing it as “NYU’s newest suicide-prevention measure” seems pretty straightforward. Is there something I’m missing?
It’s a good move on their part, too.
This comment was written by Brian.Report this comment to the moderators
April 3rd, 2005 at 5:03 pm
I don’t know. Are students really more likely to commit suicide because they have access to balconies? Or is it just that jumping off a balcony is a spectacular and public enough method that it’s likely to make the news?
I hate to be cynical, but spending a lot of time on a university campus will do that to you.
This comment was written by Sally.Report this comment to the moderators
April 3rd, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I don’t want to go into all the details but, yes, I had friends tell me that they were thinking of killing themselves by jumping off campus buildings, and gave up after they found out that the doors to the balconies were locked. Most likely, they wouldn’t have actually done it. But of the hundreds who think about it, a few would go through with it. Some students actually do kill themselves that way.
On a lighter note,
This comment was written by Brian.Report this comment to the moderators
April 3rd, 2005 at 6:22 pm
FoolishOwl in Southpark
This comment was written by Brian.Report this comment to the moderators
April 4th, 2005 at 7:11 am
I believe the crack up is a wording thing.
This comment was written by karpad.it sounds more like “after leaving your room, please remember to lock up”
so “after killing yourself, a bouncer will be left in place to card everyone attending the balcony”
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April 4th, 2005 at 7:38 am
Barry, how did you save the South Park image and post it on your blog? I tried to right-click after I finished mine, but I’m not sure how to save the picture. I’d like to post mine on my blog.
This comment was written by Trish Wilson.Report this comment to the moderators
April 4th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Trish:
I did a screen capture (on a machine running windows, usually you do this by pressing the “print screen” key). Then I opened a new file in Photoshop (but any image editor should work), pressed “control V” to paste the screen cap into the new file, and cropped it down to just the South Park image.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 4th, 2005 at 9:43 am
For what it’s worth, my highschool paper ran a story on suicide. The initial lay-out had a headline over three columns, as follows:
“Growing Societal Demands
Prompt Teenage Suicide.”?
But the final lay-out had to make the headline fit over two columns, reducing it to:
“Growing Society
Demands Prompt
Teenage Suicides.”?
That sparked a memorable journalism lesson!
This comment was written by nobody.really.Report this comment to the moderators
April 4th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
I could waste hours with the Southpark character generator.
And that blog post is freaking hilarious if only because, honestly, I can’t tell the difference between it and two-thirds of the comment threads out there.
This comment was written by PinkDreamPoppies.Report this comment to the moderators
April 4th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Um, “The Greatest Blog Post of All Time” is supposed to be the one that calls people imbeciles, retards, morons, and cretins? No thank you. Maybe if it were sexist or racist slurs.
This comment was written by blue.Report this comment to the moderators
April 5th, 2005 at 2:46 am
Gotta agree with blue. I am still trying to figure out why you consider “the greatest blog post of all time” such a great post.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
April 5th, 2005 at 5:32 am
It ticked my funny bone, and I was thoughtless about the politics of it. My bad; if I could do it over, in light of Blue’s crtiique, I wouldn’t link to it again. Sorry about that.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 5th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
I wrote the NYU newspaper editorial the Times quotes, and I currently live in one of the rooms with a balcony that will be closed next year (though I’ll be long gone by then). The decision to close the balconies is pretty silly. Yes, there has been a rash of suicides at NYU over the past year and a half, and that obviously needs to be dealt with. But locking doors and windows isn’t the way to go about it. The NYU community is disjointed and can be isolating. The administration is a bureaucratic mess that rarely accepts student input. There’s a mutual antagonism between the students and the university itself. All of these things make students here unhappy. The sense of isolation can be overwhelming, even for people like me who are outgoing and have a wide social network. And I say all this as someone who loves NYU and really enjoys going here. I can only imagine what the kids who really hate it think.
Perhaps greater attention should be paid to the fact that NYU closed its office of sexual assault prevention, support and education in favor of opening a wider “health exchange” in the wake of the suicides, with no single person specializing in sexual assault issues. This, despite a two-year effort on behalf of NOW-NYU to simply start a 24-hour sexual assault hotline. I’d like to see The New York Times cover that.
This comment was written by Jill.Report this comment to the moderators