Accommodation buildings seek to ‘end it all’
A culture of suicide is developing amongst the study bedrooms and halls kitchens on campus.
All names have been changed to protect the identity of nobody in particular.
“It was never going to be easy,” starts Rathbone, a Westwood kitchen, obviously holding back tears as he recounts what he has said to the counsellors numerous times before, “between the weather; the endless loud drinking sessions which, if I wasn’t hosting, I would never be invited to; and the disregard people held for my desire to bear my walls, I was stretched thin from the start.
“Stretched thin.”
It was this lack of sensitivity people showed that drove Rathbone to the edge. Nobody tidied up, nobody asked how he felt when pots and pans piled up, leaving him in a cluttered state. Nobody questioned whether smothering him in ill-coordinated and tasteless posters was worth their owner’s creation of an impression of culture. Before long, Rathbone was thinking about ‘ending it all’.
After what a hallmate described as a “messy pre-drinks, [Rathbone] was buried under bottles, and some legend took a shit in the oven”, the last straw broke, and Rathbone sent a surge of electricity through an archaic toaster, so as to begin the process of self-immolation.
However, thankfully, he was saved. First the firewomen quenched the flames in his body, and then the angels at Nightline (no really, they do a great job — ed), quenched the flames in his heart.
Certainly Rathbone’s story is harrowing, but this piece isn’t about one unfortunate incident. Attempts to bring about the premature demise of buildings are all too common on campus. Whether it is the high-pressure Midlands environment, or the string of well-to-do facility abusers wandering through the bed-not-board halls of this young institution, an unforgivable number of Hall sub-compartments have sought to take the great step into the final unknown.
Details are still hazy, but just yesterday campus avoided another such near miss. A Rootes D Block bedroom, let’s call her Doralina, was saved at the very edge of her continued existence after holding a stick of incense to her curtains and screaming for the end to come.
Clearly this a problem for the university. Sure, these are early days — but how was a vulnerable room allowed to get hold of a naked flame? More importantly, how was she allowed to get so damned vulnerable on campus?
Doralina is still be treated, and we want her to spend time with her loved ones before we pester her for comment.
It is time we end our denial, there is a suicide culture amongst buildings on campus, this bricks and mortar crisis of mental health can fester no longer. I am but a commentator, and despite illusions to the contrary, us commentators don’t have the answers, you — the people — do. And so it is time we talk frankly about this tragic re-occurrence. We’ve had too many near misses, let’s solve the problem before we get a hit.
(top image was originally posted on Yik Yak and has been edited)