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ACE Submits Amicus Brief in Support of MIT in Case of Student Death

Feb. 27, 2006

The American Council on Education (ACE) has joined with seven other higher education associations in submitting an amicus brief in support of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) petition to appeal the trial court's denial of summary judgment for two non-clinician administrators in Shin v. MIT, a case focusing on the extent to which student life staff can be held responsible for preventing a student's suicide.

Two other groups—15 Massachusetts colleges and universities and eight national colleges and universities—also filed amicus briefs in support of MIT's petition.

The case concerns a lawsuit filed by the parents Elizabeth Shin, an MIT student whose death in 2000 was ruled a suicide. In 2002, the student's parents filed a lawsuit against MIT, individual MIT psychiatrists and non-clinician administrators alleging that the university failed to provide reasonable mental health services and that the individuals had a legal duty to prevent the suicide and failed to prevent the suicide. All claims against MIT have been dismissed.

The lawsuit against the student life administrators has taken on national importance because the summary judgment decision states that non-clinical, student life staff have or may have a legal duty to prevent suicide, a responsibility that they do not have the expertise to fulfill. Because there is no basis in Massachusetts case law or in prevailing national appellate court opinions for this, MIT has filed a request to appeal this decision.

Colleges have a long history of providing a broad community support network for students, consisting of student life staff (housemasters, faculty, students, coaches and administrators) and expert mental health services. The network encourages the student life staff and mental health experts to work together for the welfare of students. This case threatens the support network and its collaborative nature.

The briefs argue that student life administrators do not have the expertise to assess the risk of suicide or decide the best treatment. Suicide is self-inflicted and the risk of suicide is difficult to assess and prevent, even for people with advanced mental health clinical training such as psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals.

If administrators are required to prevent suicide when they become aware of a student's problems, some reluctantly will avoid involvement with at-risk students. And some will feel they have no choice but to take the most extreme approaches to at-risk students—trying to have them hospitalized or forcing them to withdraw from the university or notifying their parents—even when the mental-health experts determine these steps are not in the students' best interest.

"The Superior Court's ruling is extremely important nationally because it jeopardizes the strong and broad community support network—of expert mental health clinicians as well as faculty, staff, students and student life professionals—that is key to every college's mission," said Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice president and general counsel for ACE. "If the Court's ruling stands, student life staff members at every college across the nation, will be wary of engaging with students—particularly troubled ones—making it less likely that these students will receive the assistance that they need.

"Most importantly, it could make these student life staff rightfully concerned that the duty to second-guess the judgment of mental-health experts and to substitute their own inexpert judgment, may harm at risk students—and at the same time they worry about liability because they don't have the expertise to make the right decisions to prevent suicide," said Steinbach.

The higher education associations that joined with ACE in filing the amicus brief are the American Association of Community Colleges, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of American Universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

ACE's brief (in PDF) may be downloaded by clicking here.