In the spring of 2001, Wellesley College freshman Molly Thompson attempted suicide for the first time. Neither she nor the college informed her parents in Rhode Island, nor did they say that Molly had spent the Mother's Day weekend in a psychiatric ward.
When Molly asked to spend the summer in Cambridge, away from her family, they assented. On July 2, she bought three bottles of Tylenol PM at the Store 24 in Harvard Square, swallowed the pills, and died.
"We were so shocked," her father, Joe, a retired management analyst, told me. "If we had known about the suicide attempt and the hospitalization we would never have allowed her to go live alone."
The Thompsons sued Wellesley, and the litigation dragged on for five years. (Wellesley won't discuss the case, beyond offering a prepared statement of condolence.) The case was settled, with Wellesley agreeing to fund a scholarship in Molly's name, instead of paying the damages sought by the Thompsons. "We felt if we extracted a large enough settlement from Wellesley, that would send a message to the insurance companies that handle this business for colleges," Thompson said. "This system needs to be changed."
In a similar case that attracted national attention, the parents of MIT student Elizabeth Shin filed a $27 million lawsuit against MIT after their daughter committed suicide on campus. They, too, lost. "The law recognizes that it is not the legal duty of a college or university to prevent a suicide," explains Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education. "It is not feasible to require that of an institution."
I have a son in college. Is it conceivable that the school wouldn't tell me if he tried to harm himself, or someone else? Yes, it is.
What stands between the parent and the child's well-being are two vast thickets of legal undergrowth: FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and the better-known HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). FERPA's original intent was to keep the records of elementary and high schools students' peccadilloes safe from the prying eyes of college admissions officials.
FERPA is now so notorious in higher education circles that it has become a verb. A friend of mine tried to get some information about his daughter's roommate, who had been hospitalized, from Brown University officials. "I called Brown and got FERPA'd," he said. That is higher ed code for "stonewalled."
FERPA has a "health and safety exception," meaning that records can be disclosed to "appropriate persons" if a student poses a threat to herself or others. But schools often interpret "appropriate persons" as narrowly as possible, excluding parents. Courts in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Iowa have all backed up the schools. Karen Bower of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law explains that the courts are applying tort law. "To prove negligence, you have to establish that the schools had a foreseeable duty to prevent the students' suicides," Bower says. "The courts didn't see that."
The 2007 massacre of 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech prompted the Department of Education to rewrite some of the FERPA regulations. The results were underwhelming. In a nutshell, the government tried to assure colleges that if they shared student information with outside parties in good faith, they wouldn't face lawsuits. The department stuffed the Federal Register with verbiage concerning proposed parental notification. But at the end of the "Disclosures to Parents" rulemaking we encounter these words: "Changes: None."
Attorney Bower doesn't think that the FERPA changes will affect the litigation of student suicides at all. "I don't think parents suing the school will ever prevail, ever," she said. "To impose on the university a greater obligation to prevent suicide than we impose on a psychiatrist doesn't make sense to me."
Where does that leave Joe Thompson? He's written to the Department of Education, he's lobbied his congressman, so far to no great effect. "My wife and I are hoping to bring about a change in school procedure, and bring some standardization here," he says. "I want to let people know what a college will do to you. Most people when they hear how Wellesley handled Molly's case cannot believe it, they are so shocked."
Yes, I am, too.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
