BOSTON — Han Nguyen was consumed by depression and struggling to stay afloat at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. His mental health continued to decline until one day, moments after a professor confronted him about an offensive email, the 25-year-old jumped from the top of a campus building to his death.
Nguyen’s suicide has sparked a legal battle headed to Massachusetts’ highest court over whether schools can be held responsible when students take their own lives. The case is being watched by colleges and universities, that say a decision against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would place an unreasonable burden on employees to stop suicides.
“It would be groundbreaking,” said Gary Pavela, a consultant on law and policy issues in higher education and author of a book about legal questions surrounding student suicides. “It would cause alarm in higher education,” he said.
The student’s family says his death was preventable and that the school had a legal duty to use reasonable care to protect him from harm. Officials knew he was a suicide risk, but failed to get him the help he needed, an attorney for Nguyen’s family said.
Months before Nguyen’s death, a professor encouraged his colleagues to pass him or they might have “blood on their hands.” Moments before Nguyen jumped, the professor “read him the riot act” over an email Nguyen sent to another MIT official that they deemed inappropriate, court records say.
“Academic freedom is not a license to needlessly and recklessly endanger students known to be at risk of death with impunity; and this court should not allow it to become one at institutions that routinely admit students — many with mental health issues — as young as their mid-teens,” attorney Jeffrey Beeler wrote in court documents.
Beeler declined to comment and said Nguyen’s family didn’t want to speak to the media.
MIT says the school wasn’t aware of the severity of his condition and he was treated by outside professionals and refused on-campus resources. None of the nine professionals who treated Nguyen while he was at MIT believed he was an imminent risk of killing himself, the school says.
“Mr. Nguyen’s suicide was a tragedy. That does not warrant a legal conclusion that MIT or any individual associated with MIT had a legal duty to prevent it,” attorneys for the school, two professors and one dean named in the lawsuit say in court documents.
