送交者: FZ 于 February 05, 2002 12:25:50:
February 5, 2002
MIT President: Death Suit Unfair
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- A wrongful death suit filed against the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology by the family of a student who committed suicide is
``unfair and inaccurate,'' the school's president says.
Elizabeth Shin, 19, of Livingston, N.J., died in April 2000 after setting herself
on fire in her dormitory room. She had been treated by MIT counselors for more than
a year before her death.
In a $27 million lawsuit filed last week, her family accuses MIT of failing to properly
deal with Shin's mental illness and failing to tell her parents as her condition worsened.
President Charles Vest defended the school's handling of the case in an e-mail to MIT's
students, faculty and staff on Monday.
He said school counselors must balance a student's privacy rights with parents' need to
know how their children are doing, and said the facts of the case will become known as
the case proceeds.
``The place for MIT to respond to these unfair and inaccurate allegations is in court,
and not in the media,'' he wrote.
Since 1990, 12 students have committed suicide at MIT.