When a student dies, IU might hear the news from a parent or the police. Rarely, a professor who hasn’t seen the student in class for a few days alerts them.
If they haven’t spoken yet, the University calls the family to give their condolences. That job usually falls to Dean of Students Harold “Pete”Goldsmith.
It’s not a call he looks forward to, but he tries to do it well. He holds in his sadness until after he hangs up.
Some parents are angry when he calls, Goldsmith said, or in shock. Sometimes they put a relative on the phone.
“I can’t possibly put myself in their place,” he said. “I really just try to let them know how sorry we are and how we’re trying to help them in any way we can and just to answer any questions they have initially. And sometimes they are questions we can’t answer about why or what happened, and we just don’t know.”
The Dean of Students Office notifies the Office of the Registrar, Residential Programs and Services, the Office of the Bursar, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the President, the dean and recorder of the school the student is enrolled in and faculty members.
“It’s like a pebble going into a pond,” said Goldsmith. “It starts very close to the individual, and it kind of spreads out from there.”
A response process – who to contact, which offices to notify – has never been formally written down.
“Actually, we have been talking about that,” Goldsmith said in September. “I think we will kind of move to a more structured procedure just to ensure that we don’t miss any steps.”
By November, his office had drafted a procedure.
“We are looking at the draft and deciding if we have everything covered.”
He is aware his office hasn’t kept a complete list of students who die, he said. At least seven names were missing from the records Goldsmith’s office provided to the IDS.
The name of Jill Behrman, whose 2000 murder in Bloomington was highly publicized, was missing.
“Sometimes we don’t know,” Goldsmith said. “Maybe we don’t have them. Maybe it’s clerical error. I just really can’t tell you. Not intentional by any stretch.”
To date, IU does not consistently record official causes of its students’ deaths. Now that death certificates are public record in Indiana, would the University consider seeking those records to track how students die?
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Goldsmith said.
