A suspended CMU student died by suicide. His parents are pushing for a mental health review at the university
Rowan de Boer was a good student, a skilled swimmer and valedictorian of his class at Allderdice High School. He was silly and well-liked by his peers. He was always smiling, his dad remembers.
In the fall of 2019, Rowan enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University. He studied electrical engineering because it was the hardest engineering program to get into.
Rowan started off his CMU career strong. He got straight A’s, made dean’s list and even served as a teaching assistant.
But several semesters into college, something changed.
Unbeknownst to his parents, Rowan stopped attending classes and isolated himself in his apartment. He wouldn’t respond to friends’ text messages or professors’ emails. CMU eventually suspended him.
Rowan’s parents noticed their son had gained weight and lost some of his humor. They had no idea he was battling severe mental health challenges until he died by suicide on May 13, 2023 — the day he was supposed to graduate.
Now, Rowan’s parents, Maarten de Boer and Venetia Pimley, are pushing CMU to conduct an external review of its mental health policies and procedures.
They believe Rowan slipped through the cracks at the elite institution, alleging the CMU did not follow proper protocol in dealing with Rowan’s academic decline. They also have identified several areas where they’d like to see change at the Oakland school.
“We don’t want other parents to have this experience,” Ms. Pimley said.
Added her husband, a professor of mechanical engineering at CMU: “We’re not the mental health experts. We’re not the ones to say what should be done. We’re just saying we found some very glaring deficiencies in how [CMU] treated Rowan’s case.”
In a statement, CMU said it has made significant investments in services and resources to help its students thrive.
“The death of any student is a tragic loss for the Carnegie Mellon community. The goal is that this never happens to anyone in our campus family,” spokeswoman Cassia Crogan said. “The work to eliminate any loss to suicide is an ongoing effort.”
Rowan’s decline
After Rowan’s death, Mr. de Boer and Ms. Pimley began to piece together the parts of their son’s life that he had hidden from them.
During Rowan’s fifth semester of college, his grade point average dropped from 4.0 to 1.8. By the end of that semester, Rowan was put on academic probation, and by the sixth semester, he had stopped attending classes altogether.
But Rowan’s academic adviser never reached out to him about his academic decline or probation, his parents said after reviewing their son’s school emails. Two professors contacted him via email to see why he wasn’t attending class, but Rowan never responded.
At the end of Rowan’s sixth semester, an assistant dean sent him a letter of suspension that asked Rowan to confirm his receipt of the letter as soon as possible. Rowan’s email account shows he never responded.
Meanwhile, Rowan, who lived in an off-campus apartment, led his parents to believe he was taking classes and on track to graduate. A discrepancy in Rowan’s expected graduation date gave his parents pause, but Rowan assured them it was a mistake on CMU’s part that he would get fixed.
Still, Mr. de Boer reached out to Rowan’s academic adviser about the graduation date. During a phone call, Mr. de Boer said, he told the adviser that Rowan didn’t seem to be himself lately, and he was worried about his son’s emotional health.
The adviser told Mr. de Boer he couldn’t share anything related to Rowan’s grades, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of students’ educational records. The adviser never indicated that his son had been suspended, Mr. de Boer said.
After Rowan’s death, Mr. de Boer and Ms. Pimley learned they could have used a parent portal to verify Rowan’s enrollment status. It never crossed their minds to check this, though, because they had no reason to believe their son wasn’t attending classes.
“We had no idea,” Mr. de Boer said.
What Rowan’s parents want to see
Rowan’s parents said they believe CMU officials failed to uphold the university’s policy in their handling of Rowan’s academic decline and suspension.
When Rowan’s grades plummeted, a CMU dean or adviser never checked up on him, even though CMU policy states that deans and advisers will do so in a timely manner for students in academic trouble during the mid-semester period.
CMU officials also never received acknowledgement of his suspension from Rowan, according to Rowan’s emails.
The couple has also identified areas in which they believe the university is lacking in support for student mental health. Rowan displayed several red-flag behaviors that went unnoticed, they say.
The couple would like an externally led task force to consider numerous action items, including:
• A campus suicide prevention plan
• Uniform procedures for handling students with academic and mental health concerns
• Uniform training of academic advisers
• The release of data from CMU’s health and well-being surveys
• A review of CMU’s interpretation of FERPA
• Training so all employees can identify signs of mental health disorders and understand FERPA law
• Better software for tracking academic performance
The task force’s findings would be publicly available to the CMU community, Mr. de Boer and Ms. Pimley envision.
“They’re not meaningful unless they’re published publicly,” Mr. de Boer said. “They should list their action items and assess how well [CMU] is doing on their action items. We think that would greatly improve university mental health.”
Ms. Pimley hopes an external review of the university’s procedures and policies would lead to a stronger safety net for struggling students.
“It’s for the student body now and in the future,” Ms. Pimley said. “It’s best for the students to do it in a professional and meaningful way.”
CMU’s current support for students
In an email to the Post-Gazette, CMU outlined several measures it has taken over the years to support student mental health.
It has has doubled counselling and psychological services staffing in the past 10 years; started a mobile crisis unit in partnership with university police; and encourages community members to make referrals “through an online and telephone referral system in order to alert the university about students who need additional support,” the university wrote.
“Hundreds of students each year are connected with resources and receive individualized care as a result of these referrals, which is in addition to the thousands of students who self-refer for care with CMU’s robust network of care services,” the statement said.
CMU said its suicide prevention strategy is based on best practices from the JED Foundation, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Higher Education Mental Health Alliance, among others.
CMU said it has created a department focused on wellness and tripled the number of programs focused on proactive care. Officials touted access to a free meditation app and workshops on “a range of other relaxation and community-focused connections.”
CMU requires students to have health insurance with “the opportunity to enroll in an insurance plan with no deductibles or copays for mental health care.” The school has introduced “additional break weeks to provide time to breathe during busy semesters,” and offers free fitness classes for students and staff, the statement said.
“In addition, programs to train faculty and staff in how to assist students have continued to grow,” the university said, “...and ways to alert caregivers about students in need of additional support have been developed.”
The university did not answer questions about its current suicide rate, whether mental health or FERPA training is a requirement for employees, when it last reviewed its mental health policies, and whether it plans to conduct a review.
Mental health challenges grow
Rowan’s mental health decline isn’t a rare occurrence in higher education.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among U.S. college students, with 1,100 students dying by suicide every year and approximately 24,000 students attempting suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Of 96,000 college students surveyed during the 2021-22 academic year, 44% reported symptoms of depression, 37% had experienced anxiety and 15% had seriously considered suicide, a report by the Healthy Minds Network found. Those were the survey’s highest rates in its 15-year history.
At elite universities, students are even more likely to develop anxiety and depression, studies have shown.
“College is stressful,” Mr. de Boer said. “I teach and I know it’s stressful. There are many stresses — you’re still growing at that time. You’re having to learn a lot of stuff. If you get behind in courses, it becomes even more stressful.”
Generally speaking, many colleges provide inadequate resources for students struggling with academic pressure and mental health challenges, said Scott MacLeod, who co-founded The Sophie Fund with his wife after their daughter Sophie, a Cornell University student, died by suicide. The advocacy group aims to support mental health and prevent suicide in the Ithaca, N.Y., area.
Mr. MacLeod said he’s found that suicide prevention is most effective at the grassroots level. College administrators, health care leaders and even young people can play a role in preventing these deaths, he said. For struggling college students, he said he believes involving parents in support is often vital.
“We're really talking about the future of our country,” Mr. MacLeod said. “[College] is a very vulnerable time for young people.
“We can't have college administrations indifferent to their mental health. You need them to be completely on board to do everything possible to support it and they need to [involve] their campuses, parents and communities, as well.”
