On Jan. 27, the Princeton community lost another student. I’ve been at Princeton for just over one semester, and two student deaths have already occurred. If we include Lauren Blackburn ’26 and Kerry Grundlingh ’27, who passed right after the release of college regular admission results and during the summer of 2025 respectively, then first-years have already been through four student deaths. For seniors, that number is much higher – nine students have died since fall 2022.
At Princeton, student death isn’t just a background issue, but a glaring, omnipresent beast that haunts the University experience.
Yet rather than centering the importance of support-seeking and communication, University administrators insist on going about their daily business during times of grief. Merely announcing the general availability of Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) leaves struggling students to seek out support on their own. In a recent column, my colleague Thomas Buckley ’27 correctly pointed out the inability of these limited mental health resources to accommodate students seeking long-term care. But the University has another pressing issue to contend with: the performative demonstration of care without taking action to acknowledge the weight of the loss.
While the loss of a student will naturally be suffered strongly by those close to them, it is also a loss that affects the community as a whole. Former classmates, clubmates, and professors may all be deeply affected. To ensure the Princeton community can actually access the resources the University promotes at the onset of the grieving process, Princeton should make class optional on the day on which a student’s death is announced.
Every time a student death occurs, the University sends out similar emails to students, guiding them to contact CPS. Meanwhile, classes continue as regularly scheduled — which for many means a continuation of required attendance policies. Grieving students are provided with and encouraged to use the resources to seek support, but are given no time off or reprieve from their substantial workload to process their emotions.
One could argue that students can communicate directly with their professors to negotiate time off, but that places the burden on students and renders the support contingent on their particular professors. The added responsibility to coordinate absences or extensions will cause stress to accumulate during an already trying time, intensifying mental health struggles.
Making classes optional is also important in registering the loss as an event that impacts the entire campus community — one that is jarring and upsetting enough to all of us to merit the pause of the daily routines of campus life. There is significance in acknowledging and treating this event as something out of the ordinary.
If the counterargument to making class optional in the aftermath of a student death is that it would prove too disruptive to the academic calendar, the response is simple: why are so many students passing away at Princeton that if we took a day off for each of them, the schedule would be too disrupted to communicate all necessary course material? If the University can’t even recognize the loss of students’ lives as upsetting and problematic enough to disrupt the daily academic routine of campus, it normalizes these tragedies.
Offering mental health resources without providing the accommodations necessary for their effective use only gestures at support rather than actually providing it, and fails to substantively address the present mental health crisis on campus. In fact, it threatens to contribute to that crisis. If students in need of help aren’t able to receive help in a timely manner during some of the most emotional and difficult periods of their lives, their own struggle will only compound.
Redundant emails and links to the CPS website are not adequate responses to increasing student deaths. Instead, the University must take time to actually consider how students will be able to utilize their resources. The University can genuinely support its students by making class optional, providing momentary reprieve from academic stress and more time to actually seek help.
Princeton first-years have already experienced four student deaths without sufficient opportunities to seek help. This does not have to be the reality for the incoming Class of 2030. A new reality is possible through the implementation of a more flexible schedule that prioritizes student wellbeing over academic rigor in times of crisis. Princeton has the infrastructure in place to help its community; now it is their responsibility to ensure students can use it.
Audrey Tan is a prospective economics major from Pullman, Wash. She is an Opinion columnist for the ‘Prince.’ You can reach her at at4887[at]princeton.edu.
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