I think the distinction you make here is important...that it's possible to criticize MIT's actions and policies without going the extra step and laying Aaron's death at their feet...in fact, I think it's ultimately more productive to treat the two things as orthogonal, because the MIT people who may be at fault may resist/stonewall heavily if admission of fault is tied to complicity in Aaron's death.

Taren's eulogy for Aaron was one of the best eulogies/call-to-actions I've watched (http://www.livestream.com/democracynow/video?clipId=pla_f83c...) and it sheds some more light on the difficulties Aaron was facing in this case.

However, when looking at additional facts, including those provided by Taren and others close to Aaron, it kind of rubs me the wrong way to treat the prosecution's causality of Aaron's suicide as fact.

via Taren:
http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/42260548767/why-aaron-died

> I don’t know exactly why Aaron killed himself. I don’t know exactly what was going through his mind. If I had known those things on January 11, if I had even known the right questions to ask, maybe I could have stopped him. Since January 11, I think about it every hour of every day.

> The Aaron I knew was active. He worked out most days until he got the flu two weeks before he died.

It's hard to second-guess someone who lived with Aaron and say, "Well, us armchair psychologists know better than you"...but the fact is, Taren was the closest person to Aaron and yet can't identify any particular warning signs that Aaron was going to kill himself. She provides compelling evidence that the trial was a huge burden on Aaron...but the question here is: why suicide on that day? There was a procedural deadline, but it didn't seem much more of a conclusive event than anything so far. It's not as if Aaron had been convicted, was on house arrest, and had just heard his appeal had been denied.

But as Taren said, Aaron was unusually sick up until the day of his suicide...at least sick enough to stop exercising, which, pedantic as it sounds, is a huge factor in mood swings. Enough to cause someone to commit suicide?...

Who knows? I guess why this all bothers me is that, by arguing that Aaron's death was conclusively caused by malicious actors perpetuates the misunderstanding that suicide and depression are, in general, caused by life circumstances....but it seems that some depression is due to physiological factors that aren't related to the "bigger picture". People who face horrific tragedy don't often kill themselves; people who seem to live in enviable circumstances sometimes do.

The world would make more sense if everyone committed suicide out of fear, hopelessness, or even weakness (as those who accused Aaron of "rage-quitting" seemed to do)...but this isn't the case, and this belief is unhelpful for those who suffer depression because of physiological, treatable factors...but who may avoid treatment because they think, "Well, I'm not being persecuted, so I must not really be depressed and thus have no reason to seek help"

I know I'm being naively idealistic here...because if Aaron hadn't died, if he had only suffered a drawn out trial and even a conviction, the call to reform the U.S attorney's office and the MIT administration would have much more diffuse support without the catalyst of his death. But I do think it's worth being mindful that the issue of treating depression isn't obfuscated.

Either way, what a tragedy. Reading Taren's words again really underscores how much of a loss Aaron's death was for civic reform.