A disturbing wave of seven suicides and likely drug overdoses has swept through Columbia University so far this school year — and students say cutthroat academics and inadequate campus counseling programs are in large part to blame.
The student deaths include three from January alone — two of whom police suspect OD’d, plus an exchange student from Japan who killed herself by leaping from the seventh floor window of her Broadway dorm.
The four other student suicides came once a month — September through December, The Post has learned.
They include a promising 21-year-old journalist, a 29-year-old Navy veteran, a Moroccan exchange student and an 18-year-old freshman from Brookfield, Missouri named Taylor Gilpin Wallace.
“You don’t know how badly I want to jump out that window right now,” Wallace, who would be Columbia’s October suicide, said in a Facetime call from his John Jay Hall dorm room to his mother in Missouri — days before quitting school, moving back home and hanging himself in his basement.
“The only time Taylor did anything, he always did it well,” his mother, Angie, told The Post of her son, who grew up in a town with just 4,400 people, and who was valedictorian of his high school class of just 73 students.
‘These students I’m surrounded with are so much smarter than me and so much better than me.’
“He didn’t have a lot of competition at Brookfield” High School, the mother said.
But at Columbia, he was surrounded by some of the brightest young minds on Earth — kids who were already starting businesses and non-profits, or excelling in the arts. Making it all worse, he suffered from depression.
“At one point [at Columbia] he said to me, ‘I don’t fit in here — these students I’m surrounded with are so much smarter than me and so much better than me.”
His mother said that she sought help from the head of Columbia’s Counseling and Psychological Services office, who “gave me her card.”
“I hung it in his dorm room,” she said — but she was unaware of any outreach they may have attempted. “I definitely feel there’s more that should have been done,” she said.
Jacqueline Basulto, who completed her bachelors in political science last fall, told The Post that depression coupled with the rigors of school life nearly drove her to suicide.
“Four hours a night sleep was normal for me,” Basulto recalled.
“I think Columbia has a really hostile, competitive culture,” said Basulto, 21, of Manhattan.
“It’s a place with a lot of people who are striving to be the best at what they’re doing … it makes you want to push yourself harder and harder and harder,” she said, joining student organizations, taking side jobs and internships.
Basulto struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts at Columbia, she said.
“I told them I was feeling suicidal,” she said of calling the school counseling service, “and they told me the first appointment they could give me was in two weeks,” she said.
“I told them my symptoms were very serious — they told me to surround myself with friends and there really wasn’t anything they could do at that time.”
Basulto has started a petition, now filled with similar horror tales, asking that mental health services be dramatically improved.
A university spokesperson did not respond to multiple calls from The Post on Wednesday.
Last week, the Dean of Columbia College, James Valentini, promised in a statement to students that he will be meeting with campus leaders to discuss “how we can continue to enhance student support and provide the highest level of care for students.”
He added, “I am fully committed to working across the university to ensure the health and well-being of our campus.”
January 23
Daniel Andreotti, 20, of Ames, Iowa, was found dead inside his eighth floor, Hartley Hall dorm. It was his first year at Columbia.
Narcotics paraphernalia was recovered in the dorm, and police sources called the death an overdose, though autopsy results have not yet been released.
“Daniel was a happy guy with immense intellectual curiosity … He would want to be remembered with a smile, not a tear, and with no regrets from those who knew him,” his family said in a statement shared with students. “Please take much care of yourselves, and if you need to, talk with a counselor.”
January 21
Ezekiel “Zeke” Reiser, 21, of Manhattan, was found dead in the W. 87th street apartment he shared with his parents, Columbia adjunct faculty members Nanako Umemoto and Jesse Reiser.
Narcotics paraphernalia was recovered at the scene; the third-year student’s death is believed to have been a drug overdose, police sources said. Autopsy results have not yet been released.
“An exceptional soul who combined an adventurous intelligence with a fundamental sweetness of spirit,” his family called him in an obituary.
January 18
Yi-Chia “Mia” Chen, an exchange student from Waseda University in Japan, jumped from the seventh floor of her dorm at Broadway and 113th Street.
December 18
Mounia Abousaid, a senior Literature major and an exchange student from Morocco, was found inside her eighth floor dorm at the Broadway Residence Hall at Broadway and W. 114th Street.
She had been dead several days, fellow students told The Post. Police sources said she was found with a plastic bag around her head and neck in what is being classified as a suicide.
In her last Facebook post, from September, she captioned a playful photo of herself with a stuffed-animal narwhal: “lifehack: manage your anxieties&existential dread by balancing a stuffed sea mammal on your head.”
November 22
Nicole Katherine Orttung, 21, of Arlington, Va., a senior majoring in Euro-American relations and political science, committed suicide during a visit home from school.
She excelled in journalism, writing for the Columbia Spectator and interning as a published reporter for the Christian Science Monitor.
“Her ambition and activity were an inspiration, and they seemed to bubble up from a deep well of enthusiasm for life,” her family wrote in an obituary.
“May Nicole now be at peace and may all her family and friends find peace as well.”
October 20
Taylor Gilpin Wallace, 18, of Brookfield, Missouri, hung himself in his basement soon after dropping out from his first year at Columbia.
He had been a track and football star and the valedictorian of his high school and aspired to be a heart surgeon, his mother told The Post.
“You have a child who comes from middle America,” the mother, Angie, said of her son, who suffered from depression.
“He was surrounded by kids who had a social life. He just didn’t connect with the kids. He was popular at home, but not at Colombia. He just felt like he didn’t fit in.”
September 6
Uriel Florez, 29, a political science major and a Navy corpsman who served in Iraq.
“For reasons that are still unknown, Uri decided to take his life on Sept. 6, 2016, and on Sept. 10, Suicide Prevention Day, my family buried our hero,” his brother, Gabriel Sanchez, who is also a Navy Veteran, wrote in the Key West Weekly shortly after the death.
“What would compel someone with a bright future to choose this route? Uri was enrolled at Columbia University in New York. He was handsome and genuine and loved to laugh. . . These questions linger and hurt immensely… He was proud of his service, and as a Corpsman, he spent his time healing and helping people.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
