[1026] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Money makes it all better, and it's not our fault
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wally)
Thu Jan 31 22:20:17 2002
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Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 21:55:50 -0500
From: Wally <wally@SUB-ZERO.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20020131195153.0225b460@hesiod>
> A. I can't help but wonder how receiving money from MIT will make it
> all better with the parents. I really don't understand this mentality
> of monetary compensation for the life of a loved one.
Apologies in advance: what follows is not particularly well-written.
Sorry. --wgh
I live south of Buffalo, NY (when I don't live here, which is something
like 48 weeks per year). My parents went to Scott Krueger's wake or
memorial service or *something* in Orchard Park (one of the Southtowns,
suburbs of Buffalo), the town that Scott was from. When he was
hospitalized, my parents had heard only that a freshman from Buffalo was
in a coma due to a fraternity incident -- and, since I'd recently pledged
Tep, they immediately thought it might be me. Indeed, Tep was having its
last non-dry party when Scott Krueger died, if I remember correctly.
I talked to my mom about all this when MIT settled with the Kruegers, and
she said that his parents had seemed shattered, of course, and _angry_.
They needed something to focus their anger on, as my mom put it, because
otherwise they'd spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves. I
yelled at her, of course: Mom, these money-grubbing *bastards* are putting
every undergraduate at MIT into greater danger because they couldn't keep
their alcoholic son from joining a frat known to be a problem on campus,
etc. But eventually she calmed me down, and shocked me by responding: if
we were in their shoes, we'd probably strike out at someone, anyone, to
fix what had happened. And if that meant suing MIT to find peace -- my
goddamn mom said this to me, I couldn't believe it -- we'd sue MIT.
What I hated, in hearing this, was acknowledging that, in her shoes, I'd
probably say the same thing. I couldn't know what it was like to invest
half a life in another human being, only to lose that person, my _blood_,
within a few short weeks of him leaving home for the first time. The
feeling of failure must have been crushing for them.
And yes, that's also fucked up -- because had they taken responsibility
for him when he was alive, they'd not have had to seek vengeance after his
untimely death. But talking in hypotheticals doesn't ease a parent's pain.
I guess I mention this because I don't think it's really about the money
-- no one would actually take the death of a child as a moneymaking
opportunity. More than likely, the Shins (and the Kruegers) see legal
recourse as a way of both getting back at the horrible monster that did
this to their children (MIT, that is), and a way of announcing to the
world, by transferring guilt, that We Are Not Bad Parents! Please Believe
Us. They know that people talk about them under their breath, and though
that won't change, the way they feel about it might finally change.
I also mention this because one of my best friends killed himself a couple
of years ago next month -- Seth Karon '01, a Tep. His mom and I have kept
in touch since Seth's death, and for her the healing process has been (and
continues to be) a wrenching one. She blamed herself, of course. She
wonders whether Tep was the right thing for Seth (and what can I tell
her?). She came to graduation and sat with my family, and spent most of
the weekend shedding tears that were a mix of joy and anguish (and how can
you stop such tears before their time?). At the end of the weekend, she
was much closer to accepting what had happened; it was as if she could
finally out a breath that she'd been holding in since Seth had died. And
the way that she's dealt with Seth's suicide has been as positive as you
could expect, but at the same time less sure, and offering fewer quick
answers.
She talks about working with MIT to look into the treatment of suicidal
students; she's mentioned a few times a book project, about coping with
the suicide of a loved one. She had a stone bench made to commemorate him,
with a quote of which he was fond (if I remember correctly); she visits
his grave all the time. She seems committed to dealing with her loss by
facing it squarely, and I admire her for that; it seems to me that the
Shins are trying to deal with their loss by somehow balancing it with a
victory of any kind, hoping for an easy answer -- it's someone else's
fault, the problem is with the system, you raised your kid just fine --
instead of the unbearable truth that their child's life was simply _out of
their hands_.
I feel a little guilty talking about Mrs Karon, but I've spent a long time
this week ranting about greed this and bad parents that, and to speak of
death without gravity seems cold to me. I'm angry with the Shins, but not
because they're greedy (I don't think that's it -- the money is stupid,
not evil). Rather, I'm angry that they're weak, and that they're willing
to make villains out of people who tried to help their daughter. (Which
isn't to say that MIT Medical doesn't need to shape up a bit -- across the
board, I feel like they have difficulty interfacing with the people here,
no matter how good they are with bacterial cultures. But come ON.)
I apologise again if this post isn't worth much in terms of literary
value; I have a hard enough time writing about Seth, and I'm a little
tired (too tired to speak of death as a financial transaction with God).
But, even though I think their suit is misguided, I think that it makes
sense to feel sorry for them rather than angry at them. And to those of
you who were friends of Liz Shin -- I'm sorry to have to think about this
again. No one should.
W.
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