"Ah, the view is breathtaking, isn't it?"
I startled and turned to the voice, finding it attached to a young man with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Eyes that held a haunted expression on his too pale, though otherwise handsome face.
"It is," I managed, trying to shake the feeling that he'd materialized next to me.
"I wish I had seen it that way," he said wistfully. "As hope."
I couldn't think of a single response to that, and though I must have been gawking, he smiled at me, a flash of perfect, white teeth, then pointed toward the falls.
"The view from there was epic." He stated.
I followed his arm and saw the bridge suspended above the gorge. "Was?" I echoed dumbly, staring at the structure.
I turned back to him, but he was gone.
I sat up in bed abruptly, my heart racing. Just a dream, I thought, feeling relieved but a little sad. That face...had been familiar. I rifled under my pillow and found my phone, sliding it out and turning it on.
27 college kids had jumped to their deaths at the gorges in and around the Cornell campus over a twenty year period, from 1990 to 2010. Six of them in that final year before the chain linked fences and nettings were installed.
Among them, an 18 year old student from Florida- who had brown hair and hazel eyes, a lovely smile on a handsome face.
Bradley Marc Ginsburg had shown no signs of mental health problems to his parents or roommate, and his friends from home insisted that while a little homesick, he'd been doing well at Cornell.
In the year that followed, his father sued the city of Ithaca and Cornell University, claiming negligence on their part for not
developing stronger suicide-prevention features for the Thurston Avenue bridge.
He ultimately accepted $100,000 and a perpetual Cornell scholarship in his son's name.
The fame generated by this particular case led to the installment of safety features. Did this stop students from taking their own lives?
I've always believed where there's a will, there's a way, but strangely I can't seem to find much on suicides since the famous case of Bradley. Deaths, yes, but either unspecified or deemed an accident.
Makes one wonder if there's an intentional spin occurring to distance the university from the suicide stigma.
But people haven't forgotten, this bridge is still widely known as Suicide bridge, and there are many whispers about the strain put on young people who attend this rigorous, prestigious campus.
And even quieter whispers about freshmen pledging and hazing- though there does appear to be less of that in the past several years.
Less whispers of it anyway.
I truly hope that an awareness of the mental health crises that seems to generate from the pressure of things like grade averages and successful fraternity/sorority pledging has made a difference in recent years.
And not that these things are being swept under the rug to appear to be lessening.
Sadly, we may not know the truth of this until another family like the Ginsburgs draws national news attention....
https://ithacavoice.com/2021/05/body-found-in-gorge-identified-as-cornell-student/
https://www.weny.com/story/46342733/cornell-university-agriculture-and-life-science-student-dies
Inside this article:
**This is the fourth student death announced during the Spring 2022 semester. **
No further details of the other deaths given...
