As I was talking with my adviser about this incident, she pointed out to me that much more common are cases when a student commits suicide. The most widely publicized suicide is that of Jason Altom. On the warm, humid day in mid-August when he ended his life, he walked up to the third floor bedroom of the house he shared with two fellow graduate students at Harvard University, drank a liquid laced with cyanide procured from the chemistry laboratory where he was considered an unusually gifted student and lay down on his bed. It is not for that note, but rather for the three suicide notes Jason left on the nightstand next to his bed, that his death has had reverberations far beyond Harvard. One was addressed to his parents, a second to the chairman of Harvard's chemistry department and the third to his graduate adviser, the Nobel laureate Elias J. Corey.
Professors here have too much power over the lives of their grad students.
It's true the life of a graduate student is full of frustrations. Professors still make jokes during seminars about graduate students although they are not allowed to make sexist, ethnic, racist, or other discriminatory jokes. Repak believes that the basis of most friction is lack of communication between faculty and students and some of the breakdown in the dialogue may stem from the personalities involved. Sometimes good scientists have inadequate people and social skills. Some professors simply do not take into account the stresses that graduate students face.