[rawland]

My condolences to the family & friends.

Having read this article it made me sad. On a good note, ACM seems to have reacted in a proper way. Glad to see this. This student must have been very very alone and suffered immensely to take this decision. Sadly, I have witnessed this exact same thing at a very well known university in Germany. With great effort this was kept away from the public and blamed on the PhD student himself ('This guy had _other_ problems'). Even though he left a letter, which was also very explicit about his situation. This left me thinking, how often this actually happens but receives no publicity...

I believe most people, who enter the world of academe have good principles and ideals. In German pedagogy this is called "Humboldtsches Bildungsideal" which translates unfortunately into this [1]. Humboldt's model was very much based on many ideas of the enlightenment, esp. concerning one's pursuit of intellectual growth for its own sake and the world citizen.

Unfortunately the economic grip on the world of academe in many fields gets stronger and at one point in time ones sees these ideals destroyed.

It's best witnessed with what happened to the internet. Wonder how many can remember how it 'felt' in the beginning after CERN opened it to the world... and now, look at it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...