Comment by brandnewlow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brandnewlow | Hacker News Reader

This is a sad story. I am reminded of another Princeton suicide, Manzili Davis '06 drove to California during spring break of his senior year, rented a storage unit and took his life inside of it. It was weeks before he was found. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S14/54/83M99/

We had mutual friends and I met him a few times. He had his own "darkness" just like Bill Zeller.

I do wonder if places like Princeton bring out the darkness in people there. I enjoyed my time there but spent the last year of it in and out of counseling and more depressed than I ever hope to be again.

There were some good counselors there in the health center who were kind and patient. It's too bad Bill wasn't able to connect with one of them.

A lot of the problem is with the town. The "town" of Princeton is a sham propped up to impress visiting students. There's really not a whole lot there. Meanwhile, students are required to live in dorms all 4 years, which gives them a really artificial "home life" that doesn't help ground you very much either.

I lived and worked in the town of Princeton for two years after graduation and it was a thoroughly depressing and isolating experience. Unless you're a member of the university community, there's just nothing there to get excited about. You have to leave on the train for the day to do anything interesting.

I disagree strongly that Princeton is a "sham" town-- it's very real and has its own identity outside of the University. I've spent quite a bit of time there and there are plenty of people who have lived there for years with no connection whatsoever to the school.

As to your contention that there is "not a whole lot there", I would just give you Labyrinth Books as Exhibit A: one of the best bookstores on the East Coast IMO.

I'm a little more open to your feeling that Princeton is isolated, but originally there was a reason for that. A lot of American schools are in the middle of nowhere. At one time this was a selling point for parents: they felt better sending their kids to schools where there was little chance of big-city trouble to get into like NY or Chicago (for example). It is a genuine tragedy if Bill Zeller fell victim to isolation that was originally planned to protect students, not psychologically alienate them.

While Princeton may not quite have been sunny California, the banks of the Charles, or Manhattan's Upper West Side, at least you weren't in frozen, sunless, vitamin-D-less Ithaca, or downright dangerous New Haven. Count your blessings. :)

Seriously, the area around Yale is terrible.

I really don't want to change the subject or take away from the discussion about Bill, but I just want to quickly interject and say I disagree with this. I have now lived in Princeton for 18 years, unaffiliated with the University (I went to HS here, but go to college elsewhere). The town is picturesque, historic, and enhanced by the sterling reputation of the University. As for the isolation, NYC is just an hour train ride away, Philly an hour and a half. I suppose there isn't a ton of stuff to do in the town, but I've never found it to be a problem. In any case, Princeton is a great place to live.

You've lived there for 18 years. I assume that means you have 18 years worth of friends, family, neighbors, memories. Completely unrelated situation. Imagine if you knew no one there when you got there, didn't own a car, were single, had no kids, and your nearest family member lived 1000 miles away. That's the kind of isolation a lot of undergrads and grad students face there. And the town of Princeton doesn't really have a whole lot for them.

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience, but it's not a universal one. I did the same thing (4 years undergrad followed by 2 years living/working in the town) and had a great time. Other than reunions, I didn't do anything university-related after graduating, so it's not like I was just extending my college experience by two more years.

You're way off-base about this. Lots of good schools are in college towns that have "not a whole lot there." This has absolutely nothing to do with what causes a handful of people to commit suicide. And Bill's suicide note gives no indication that he was upset about anything Princeton-specific. I'm sorry you had a bad experience living in the town of Princeton, but that's completely orthogonal to what happened here.

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