College students are like coal: we are under an immense amount of pressure. Most university students are enrolled in sixteen credit hours each week and are supposed to devote two hours of studying for each credit hour. Schools now encourage students to work twenty hours a week and engage in two extracurricular organizations. With all that going on in our lives, we barely have time to sleep and eat let alone deal with our stress in a healthy way. Across the nation, there are more than 1,000 suicides a year on college campuses.
Over the weekend a senior at Georgia Tech was shot and killed by police officers in what is now looking like a deliberate suicide. Scout Shultz was found outside a dorm with an object in hand after campus police received a call saying there was a person outside with "a knife and gun". When officers arrived they encountered an unstable and barefoot Shultz. After two officers tried to convince Shultz, you can hear them say, "Shoot me." At this point, the officers should have realized that they were dealing with someone in the middle of a mental breakdown. Instead, a young adult lost their life due to insufficient training.
Scout Shultz was a very involved student in both their academics and the social aspect of college. They served as president of Pride Alliance at Georgia Tech and identified as non-binary. As someone who was already under stress for their gender, adding school and social work on top of that would be enough to push anyone over the edge. Scout Shultz was killed due to bad judgment and training.
Police officers, especially those that work on a college campus, need special training to handle situations like this. Had those officers been taught how to de-escalate the situation Shultz could have gotten the help he needed. 8.3% of college students admit to having suicidal thoughts. If one officer were trained in this sort of situation than it could save many lives, not just those involved in an altercation with police. Some who are suicidal commit to drinking themselves to death which usually lands them in the back of a cop car. If officers are trained to detect the warning signs, they might be able to deter this behavior and help the individual seek help.
Campuses need to stop acting like suicide and depression is not their problem. It is a responsibility to preserve human life no matter whether it's their choice or not. It's starting to improve, universities are now starting to offer access to mental health care but it needs to go further than that. Mental health is an issue for everyone because it affects everyone. Scout Shultz could have lived to graduate from college but he won't because the officers did not possess the right tools to help him.
