By Jade Laplante
Content warning: This piece discusses a student’s death by suicide.
Fresh out of graduate school, I was eager to begin my first role as a professional staff member. To me, residence life has always been about fun: holding events, engaging with students, and watching resident assistants (RAs) develop into strong leaders. Within the first few months of my role, I was met with a tragedy that one can’t ever really train or prepare for.
Just eight weeks into the semester, I got a text that there was an emergency on campus, and everybody needed to respond. As I approached the scene, I was met with caution tape and flashing police lights. I felt a pit in my stomach. I was ushered inside and informed that a student had jumped, and we needed to keep other students away from the scene. My brain went into work mode, and I told myself I had a job to do. I gave Public Safety my office to use as a private space to interview students. As soon as I stepped into my coworker’s office, I was in shock because we had just lost a student. Once they were identified as a resident I had previously spoken to, I immediately broke down. Losing a student is tragic, but the pain of losing a resident I had spoken to hurt more than I could ever imagine.
Luckily for me, I had (and still have) a fantastic team of colleagues who immediately came to my aid. My director instructed me to go home and take care of myself, assuring me that they had everything under control. I got in the car with my partner and drove to my parents’ house. I didn’t go back to campus for two days, but my supervisor checked in on me each day, making sure I was taking care of myself and assuring me that he was taking care of my RAs and my residential community.
I eventually went back to work. For weeks, it was painful for me to be in my office or my building. I avoided the floor where the student lived for a while. I thought that by avoiding the topic or space, I would get over it faster, but what I learned with time is that avoiding the space or pushing away my grief would do me no good; it would only make my work harder and hurt my mental health in the long run. So I began doing the work: I started going to therapy, talking more about what happened, and allowing myself to feel the things I felt rather than push them away. With time, it started to hurt less, and I started to feel better.
When the one-year anniversary of the student’s death approached, I began feeling it all over again. I experienced every feeling: sadness, anger, guilt, and everything in between. I felt like I was moving backward, and I thought, “How am I ever going to have a successful career in residence life if I can’t move on from losing a student?” My supervisor, who had only been supervising me for a few months at this point, sat me down in her office and let me feel all my feelings. She created space for me to simply exist in whatever form I needed to be okay. I was still getting my work done, and I was still meeting expectations because I was given the space to feel.
The importance of feeling psychological safety at work is rarely talked about. What I have learned from my grief and this tragedy is the importance and value of a supportive workplace. At no point in time have I ever felt that my feelings were invalid or that I needed to push them away. My supervisors, peers, and other leadership team members rallied around me and created a safe environment so I could feel my grief and work through it. Creating a culture of care at work allows everyone to be their authentic selves and do their best work. And on the days they can’t do their best, they feel love and support in the encouragement to take care of themselves and come back even better.
After many tears, therapy sessions, and Andes mint chocolates, which my supervisor kept in her mini fridge for when I was having a bad day, I am beginning to feel like I am able to use my grief to help. During our most recent winter RA training, when we did hands-on work (commonly known as Behind Closed Doors), I felt comfortable enough to challenge myself with facilitating the suicidal ideation scenario. As I guided RAs through the debrief, I was able to reflect on my experience and give them tools and language to help them support students when they struggle while also understanding the scope of their role. A topic that would have sent me into a spiral became one that I felt equipped to train others on. My grief became a strength. My grief. Became. A strength.
Losing a student to suicide will never not hurt. Regardless of your role, there will still be feelings of pain and grief. Feel those emotions. Ignoring the grief will only delay it, and the only way out is through. Having a team that supported me through the lowest low made a massive difference when processing grief and has made celebrating the highs even more rewarding. I will never forget or “get over” losing a resident to suicide, but I am taking the pain that I felt in losing them to help the residents I have now. With time and the support of my team, my grief became a strength that will serve me for the rest of my career.
Jade Laplante is a residence coordinator at Rochester Institute of Technology in Henrietta, New York.
